Blair rules out new July 7 inquiry

In the Commons, the Prime Minister said that a fresh inquiry would be a "mistake" and would undermine public support for the security services in the fight against terrorism.

Home Secretary John Reid had previously left open the possibility of a further independent inquiry, although he rejected demands by survivors and relatives of the dead for a full public inquiry.

Mr Blair's comments came amid reports that MI5 did not show surveillance photographs of the bombers' ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan to the original inquiry by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

The BBC reported that although MI5 had six photographs of Khan taken during the investigation into another major terror plot, only one was actually shown to the ISC. Whitehall sources said that while the committee did not see the photographs, it was told that they existed. "The reason they were not shown them is because it didn't add to the facts. If they had felt the need to ask to see them, they would have asked," one source said.

One photograph of Khan was given to the ISC as it was shown to a detainee to see if he could identify the man in the picture and was therefore particularly relevant to their inquiry. The sources strongly denied suggestions that the other photographs were withheld from the ISC because they were taken by police rather than MI5.

The ISC, chaired by former Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy, is to look again at the evidence in the light of the disclosures in the fertiliser bomb plot trial which ended this week at the Old Bailey with the convictions of five defendants.

It emerged that Khan and his right-hand man Shehzad Tanweer were recorded by surveillance teams on several occasions in 2004 with the ringleader of the fertiliser bomb plot, Omar Khyam. Although Khan was overheard discussing the prospect of going to Pakistan to fight with the militias he was not designated as a priority for further investigation. Neither he nor Tanweer were actually identified by the security services until after the July 7 bombings in London more than a year later.

At Prime Minister's Questions Mr Blair insisted that the ISC had been given all the relevant material and warned that a new inquiry would simply divert resources away from the fight against terrorism. "If we end up now saying that the Intelligence and Security Committee was not an adequate inquiry, we have another inquiry, we will simply cause great anxiety and difficulty within the service.

"We won't get any more truth, because the truth is there in the Intelligence and Security Committee, but what we will do is undermine support for our security services and I am simply not prepared to do it."