LONDON, Dec 2: Scotland Yard announced on Tuesday a review into its handling of a probe into political leaks which triggered the arrest of a top opposition lawmaker and a major constitutional storm in Britain.

Damian Green, immigration spokesman for the main opposition Conservatives, was held for nine hours last Thursday, while London’s Metropolitan Police also searched his House of Commons and constituency offices.

The move has prompted furious claims that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, which has been trailing the Conservatives in opinion polls for months, may have been behind the “Stalinist” move.

Green was arrested during a probe into Home Office leaks which led to embarrassing newspaper stories including that an illegal immigrant worked as a cleaner in parliament and that illegal immigrants were working as security guards.

Police say they arrested Green, who denies any wrongdoing, on suspicion of “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office”, while officers also held a junior civil servant, Chris Galley.

Now Scotland Yard’s acting head Paul Stephenson has asked Ian Johnston, the head of the British Transport Police and a leading figure in the Association of Chief Police Officers to deliver an interim report within one week and a full report in two.

The announcement shows no sign of calming the furious debate, particularly over the police search of Green’s office in parliament, which has been making headlines in Britain since the end of last week.

Smith has declined to apologise, saying she was unaware a senior Conservative would be arrested until after it happened and that police should be able to follow the evidence in a case wherever it leads them.

She told BBC television on Sunday that the police probe was into “a systematic series of leaks from a department that deals with some of the most sensitive and confidential information in government”. But Dominic Grieve, shadow home secretary for the Conservatives, has hit out at her, saying she is ultimately responsible for the actions of police.

“That’s why I find it so astonishing that she has been washing her hands of this,” he told BBC radio Monday.

“It would have been Stalinist and wrong if she had sought to direct the police operationally.

“It was part of her job to ask searching questions and make sure that procedures were being properly followed before police decided to erupt into the Houses of Parliament.” House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin, who has faced heavy criticism from those who say he should have stopped police from entering the so-called mother of parliaments, is due to make a statement to the Commons on Wednesday.

“The parliamentary authorities connived in a shocking abuse of power when they permitted Mr Green’s Commons office to be searched,” the Daily Telegraph’s columnist Andrew Gimson wrote on Tuesday.

“The arrest was a grotesque attack not just on the work of one MP (member of parliament) but on the right of all MPs to defend our liberties and hold the executive to account.”—AFP