David Cameron has ordered a review into whether armed police should have greater legal protection if they shoot terrorists and other suspected criminals.

He has asked for an inquiry amid concerns that officers who shoot to kill fear prosecution if they pull the trigger.

A government source stressed that the review has been requested in light of police concerns over the powers they have to protect the public from a Paris-style terror attack.

However, the move will be controversial because it comes in the same week that an officer was arrested and interviewed under caution as part of the Independent Police Complaints Commission inquiry into the death of Jermaine Baker.



The 28-year-old, from Tottenham, north London, died after being shot during an operation against an alleged attempt to spring two offenders from a prison van near Wood Green, north London.

It also comes after the Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, expressed reservations about the idea of a shoot-to-kill policy in relation to terrorist incidents, causing senior party figures to say they disagreed. He later clarified that he would authorise the use of lethal force against terrorists in the UK in exceptional circumstances if he was prime minister.

Corbyn warned that Cameron’s review could damage community relations and raised fears it was a political stunt. He said he supports sending in the SAS in the event of a Paris-style terror attack but added: “If you want the public as a whole to have confidence in the police force and confidence they can cooperate with them in the future, any shooting on the street diminishes that confidence.

“There has to be a very robust and strong independent inquiry into what the police do. Like any other public organisation, they must be held to account.”

Angela Eagle, the shadow business secretary, said there could be a case for reforming the rules around police use of firearms but stressed the need for a balance. “There have to be safeguards because we know what happens when people are shot wrongly ... but we also need to give our armed police the confidence if they’re dealing with a marauding terrorist of the sort we saw in Paris that they can get that person down and get them on the ground and save life,” she said.

“It’s important to get the balance right, it’s got to be democratically decided. We just can’t have shoot to kill without any kind of democratic involvement. There’s no yes or no answer to that.”

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, said the police needed to feel protected but warned against a “kneejerk response to terror attacks. “It is vital communities have complete confidence in their police,” he said. “That means nobody should be above the law, including armed officers.”

The review, which will report privately to Cameron in the new year, will be conducted by the Home Office, the attorney general and the Ministry of Justice and could lead to measures being included in the forthcoming policing and justice bill.

The Sunday Times quoted a senior government source as saying: “Terrorist incidents both at home and abroad have shown very clearly the life and death decisions police officers have to make in split-second circumstances.

“We must make sure that when police take the ultimate decision to protect the safety of the public they do so with the full support of the law and the state – there can be no room for hesitation when lives are at risk.”

In July, a top police marksman who shot a suspected armed robber, Azelle Rodney, six times at short range was cleared after 10 years of controversy surrounding the killing.



One high court judgment during those proceedings concluded there was “considerable force in the expressed concern that minute dissection of fractions of a second with the benefit of hindsight will discourage an appropriate response, in real time, to threats thereby resulting in potentially increased danger to those involved in [or likely to be affected by] these exceedingly difficult operations”.