Metropolitan Police chief Sir John Stevens announced yesterday, without any details, that Britain had stopped a terror attack on the scale of the Madrid bombings.

TERROR attacks on London on the scale of the Madrid bombings have been thwarted by Britain’s security forces, Metropolitan Police chief Sir John Stevens has claimed.

“Terror attacks on London have been thwarted,” said Sir John, in an interview with a BBC radio station.

But he added: “We are still in a grave area of great threat.”

Asked if there could have been an outrage in London similar to that in Madrid, where rush-hour bombings killed nearly 200 people, Sir John said: “Yes. I can’t discuss it because of court proceedings, but yes, we have stopped a Madrid.”

Later, Scotland Yard said that Sir John had made it clear in the BBC interview that he did not necessarily mean that any thwarted attack on London would have taken the form of an attack on trains.

Sir John said: “The risk of an attack to London has not changed; an attack is still inevitable.

”Thank God, to date, and we have had to work extremely hard, we’ve thwarted attacks.”