Angered by senior Labour politicians who criticised the arrest of a key No 10 aide on Friday, police leaders and senior former officers yesterday openly accused the government of playing “Big Brother” politics by improperly interfering in a police investigation.

Len Duvall, a senior Labour insider and chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority which oversees Scotland Yard, said the behaviour was reminiscent of the government’s actions over the Hutton inquiry into the death of David Kelly, the government scientist.

He warned politicians including Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, and David Blunkett, the former home secretary, to “shut up” and “stop “whingeing and whining” about the police investigation. “No one in this country is above the law,” he said.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Duvall, who is also chairman of the Greater London Labour party, said Jowell, Blunkett and Lord Puttnam, the film producer and Labour donor who was ennobled by Blair, would look stupid when the police made their evidence public.

His intervention came after Blunkett, Jowell and Puttnam criticised police officers’ dawn arrest of Ruth Turner, one of Blair’s senior aides. They claimed the police actions were unnecessary and “theatrical”.

Four Scotland Yard officers arrested Turner, Blair’s director of government relations, at her home at 6.30am and questioned her about alleged breaches of the 1925 Honours Act and on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

Sir Chris Fox, former president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said it was “suspicious” that the three senior Labour figures had all made similar points within a short time. He said the dawn raid was justified as normal practice for such a serious allegation.

“I find it really quite depressing if politicians are smearing or coercing or trying to influence a police inquiry which was instigated by an elected member of parliament in the first place and which the public expects to be straight down the line without any suggestion that politics is influencing it,” he said.

“It’s really important. If a chief constable can’t investigate without this sort of media, coercive pressure, I worry for a free democratic country. They should keep their mouths shut and await the answer.”

Some of the Met’s fury focused personally on Jowell, whose husband David Mills has faced a long-running police inquiry into allegations of bribery in Italy. Duvall said: “Others might say that Tessa Jowell ought to be very careful. Quite frankly, at one stage we could have been investigating her, or the Italians could have been. Talk about glass houses and all the rest of it. Others might not think her defence of Turner] would go down very well if she ever goes before a judge as a character witness.”

In comments which suggest for the first time that the police are confident that they have sufficient evidence to press charges, Duvall said: “They [the Met’s inquiry team] are not after a political scalp. People like Blunkett, Puttnam and Jowell ought to be very careful about rushing in to make any statements at this moment. At an appropriate time, stuff will go into the public domain that will justify the police’s approach.

“When information comes into the public domain they will need to reflect very carefully on what they have said in the past 24 hours. I think they are going to look f****** stupid. Quite frankly, this is a mess created by the people involved in the situation. This childish, ‘we’re being picked on’ [attitude] is like Big Brother.”

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