Earlier this week , Middlesbrough MP Stuart Bell, under the protection of Parliarmentary privilege, launched a detailed attack on Ray Mallon and his policing methods. Today, in the interests of fairness and balance, we give Mr Mallon the opportunity to respond to Mr Bell's accusations.

SIR John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, sounded a timely warning this week when he spelt out the nightmare situation now faced by rank and file police officers.

He told how violent criminals with a history of offending are allowed to prowl the streets "arrogant, untouchable, fearless and ready for anything".

How teenagers are stabbed for a mobile phone, how a couple were shot for their watches, and how victims are nothing more than numbers in a game played out by lawyers, funded at enormous expense from the public purse.

That is the picture in London today - the tragedy is that, in Middlesbrough, we actually managed to reclaim the streets. But then they were handed back on a plate to the criminals.

To the outsider, Operation Lancet must appear very complicated. In my opinion, it is quite simple. Do you back the police or do you back the burglars?

An independent review of Lancet has revealed that criminals were granted immunity from criminal prosecution in exchange for statements.

On Wednesday night, Middlesbrough MP Stuart Bell delivered a speech to the Commons in which he presented such statements as fact.

Central to this view of Lancet was a statement from Peter Matthews - a criminal with a long history specialising in burglary and theft.

According to Matthews' statement, he was taken out of the police station at Middlesbrough by two detectives, plied with drink and drugs and forced to admit a string of offences in order to enhance the success of Zero Tolerance policing methods.

It is then claimed that I committed the criminal offences of, firstly, ordering a detective to threaten Matthews to keep his mouth shut and, secondly, of ordering other officers to say nothing about what had happened.

I strenuously deny these allegations, and Mr Bell didn't make them when we went head-to-head in a televised debate last month. Instead, he waited until he was in the Commons, protected from the libel laws.

The full facts are these:

Peter Matthews and his co-accused Darren Rogers admitted a string of offences when they appeared before Teesside Crown Court in August 1997.

They made no claims of malpractice against officers. They were remanded in custody. They must have expected to be jailed for a long stretch when they next appeared. But, before their sentencing, they were visited by Lancet and provided new statements. Matthews suddenly alleged he was given drugs for confessions; Rogers alleged he was beaten up by police.

In return, they were allowed to change their pleas to not guilty. Instead of being jailed, they walked free when the prosecution offered no evidence.

I bet Matthews and Rogers were delighted. Not only did they escape justice, but they also caused immense trauma for the detectives who caught them.

Of course, it wasn't long before their reprieve was over and they reverted to type. Within weeks, Rogers was found cowering behind a pensioner's bedroom door brandishing a screwdriver; Matthews committed drug and burglary offences.

If Matthews and Rogers had not changed their statements after their first court appearance, they would have been behind bars instead of putting more victims through hell.

The Matthews' statement was indicative of the so-called evidence used by Lancet to level 400 criminal allegations against myself and another 60 hard-working police officers. When the Crown Prosecution Service looked at it, it kicked the whole lot into touch. The Treasury Counsel and the Director of Public Prosecutions did the same.

An independent review of Lancet by West Yorkshire Police came to the same conclusion. It concluded there was no evidence of corruption within Cleveland Police, and spelt out the dangers of offering deals to criminals guilty of serious offences.

In his speech in the House of Commons, Mr Bell made much of me pleading guilty to 14 disciplinary charges.

I must remind him that police officers are barred from political office and, in order to stand for election as mayor of Middlesbrough, I had to be out of the force by April. When my hearing was delayed yet again, I had a simple choice. End the process by admitting the disciplinary breaches and stand in the mayoral election, or continue to fight and miss the boat.

It was gut-wrenching to have to admit something I hadn't done, but I owed it to my supporters to ensure my name was on the ballot paper. My name had been cleared by four independent bodies and I wasn't going to allow Lancet to take another year of my life and deny me the right to stand as mayor. Since then, Mr Bell has regularly proclaimed that, in 32 years as a barrister, he has never known an innocent person plead guilty.

Does Mr Bell seriously expect us to believe he has never heard of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Stefan Kisko and other celebrated legal cases?

And what about Peter Matthews? Mr Bell would have us believe that, in his first appearance in August 1997, Matthews pleaded guilty to a string of burglaries he didn't commit.

Curiously, Mr Bell also asserts that the cost of Lancet was £3.25m. This contrasts with the official review of Lancet which concluded that the cost stood at £3.3m in December 1999. According to the head of Lancet, Lloyd Clarke, the cost then rose by half a million pound every three months.

The cost is still rising. As Lancet enters its fifth year, there are still five officers suspended on full pay waiting, along with several serving officers, for their disciplinary hearings to finally get underway.

In Wednesday night's speech, Mr Bell said that the Matthews' statement showed how "the clear-up rate of crime was improved in Mallon's Middlesbrough". He alleged that my men persuaded criminals to admit offences they hadn't committed in order to boost detection rates.

This shows a complete ignorance of Zero Tolerance policing. The strategy aimed to reduce the number of crimes being committed. Artificially boosting the detection rate would have no impact on this.

We reduced the number of crimes being committed by taking the battle to the criminals. We laid down the law by confronting anti-social behaviour and letting criminals know we were watching their every move. We went to the line - but not beyond it.

Crime tumbled. The figures were calculated and released not by me, but by Cleveland Police. They were checked and confirmed by the Home Office. Those official figures show there were 2,210 crimes recorded in July 1996. In July 1997, using Zero Tolerance policing, this was reduced to 1,666. In the real world, that means 544 fewer victims of crime per month.

But just as important was our determination to reduce the fear of crime. The people on the estates in Mr Bell's constituency are the best judges as to the fear of crime. And they will tell Mr Bell whose fault it is if that fear of crime has risen in the past four years.

They will tell Mr Bell whose fault it is that, as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has said, criminals now "prowl the streets, arrogant, untouchable, fearless and ready for anything".