MI5 told MPs day before 7/7 'no terrorism threat'

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller gave the assurance at a private meeting of Labour whips at the Commons less than 24 hours before four explosions killed 52 people on Tube trains and a No 30 bus.

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She also reportedly said that the security situation was under control.

Although the revelation that the security services were caught unawares by the attack is no surprise, the MI5 director general's apparent confidence will add to pressure on the security service over its failure to prevent the bombings.

Details about how much MI5 knew about the bombers' ringleader, Mohammad Sidique Khan, and fellow bomber Shehzad Tanweer, which cannot be disclosed at the moment for legal reasons, are expected to be made public in the next two months.

It is already known that officers had listened in to conversations involving the pair, although neither man had been identified prior to the bombings because investigations had focused on others who were thought at the time to be a greater danger.

Instead, the pair were only known as unidentified males of Pakistani origin. It was only after the bombings that the connection was made.

The disclosure about Dame Eliza's remarks to the Labour whips, which comes two months after she announced plans to retire this year, prompted new calls for a full inquiry into the bombings.

Grahame Russell, whose son Philip, 29, died in the Tavistock Square bus bombing, said: "Unless we have a public inquiry where witnesses can be called and questioned, we will never get the truthful answers about what happened before, during and after 7 July 2005."

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, repeated his demands for an independent rather than public inquiry, similar to the Franks inquiry held after the Falklands war.

"Reports like this, and the Metropolitan police commissioner saying hours before the bombings that London had a gold standard' of counterterrorism policing, can only reinforce the absolute need for an independent inquiry," he said.

Ministers argue that such an inquiry would be an expensive and time-consuming diversion for police and security services and that reports by a Parliamentary select committee and the Home Office have already provided a comprehensive analysis of what happened.

According to Labour politicians present at the 6 July meeting, which was organised by chief whip Hilary Armstrong, about a dozen party whips were present.

Dame Eliza reportedly told them there was "no imminent threat to London or the country" from a terrorist attack.

This was in keeping with the official terror threat assessment by the Government's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which had been downgraded one level from "severe" to "substantial" six weeks before.

If an attack had been known to be imminent, the threat level would have been raised to "critical".

The current threat level is rated as "severe", meaning there is a high risk of an attack, but no specific knowledge of a particular plot.

MI5 says that about 30 potential plots and 1,600 suspected terrorists are now being monitored.