The security services could not have been expected to prevent the July 7th London attacks despite two of the bombers being previously known to them, a long-awaited report has concluded.

The second report from the intelligence and security committee into the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil says MI5 could have done nothing to identify Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer as potential bombers.

Both men appeared in surveillance footage on the periphery of earlier terrorist investigations, a fact that emerged in court cases following the bombings.

"We cannot criticise the judgments made by MI5 and the police based on the information that they had and their priorities at the time," the report claims.

Its authors add that "there will always be gaps in intelligence coverage".

Today's report has been in the prime minister's hands since last July, but legal restrictions have prevented its publication until now.

It was before parliament at 11:30 BST, with journalists permitted to read it 90 minutes earlier, and survivors of the 2005 attacks 90 minutes earlier still.

The contents of the report were highly confidential, with the committee understood not to have had a leak in the last three decades, but its publication has already provoked anger.

July 7th survivor Rachel North, who speaks for other survivors and victims' families, said the government was not acting on a level-playing field.

"We're not allowed to take a legal team into the room, despite being in the middle of proceedings," she told inthenews.co.uk ahead of its publication, not mentioning the confiscation of mobile phones and laptops.

"We will not be able to give a full legal answer tomorrow, what we say tomorrow is an initial response; our thoughts and feelings."

It has also been suggested that the segregation of journalists and survivors in being handed the report is a ploy to stop them from talking to the media, while 7/7 survivors are similarly not allowed into the ISC press conference upon its publication.

Fifty-two people died when four British Muslims blew themselves up on London's transport network, making it the worst terrorist attack in the country's history.

The government initially claimed the bombers, Hasib Hussain, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Germaine Lindsay and Shehzad Tanweer, were not known to security services, leading to a report from the ISC in May 2007 that concluded it was "undesirable" MI5 had chosen not to investigate the individuals.

But evidence that appeared in court during the trial of terrorist suspects arrested in 2004 showed meetings between the suspects and two of the bombers on surveillance footage taken by MI5.

A second ISC report was then commissioned after then prime minister and home secretary Tony Blair and John Reid rejected calls for a public inquiry.

Those calls are set to intensify today, with several survivors and their legal representatives due to hold a press conference at 15:00 BST.
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