Overview
- The inquiry’s latest phase opened this week to examine Special Demonstration Squad deployments from 1993 to 2007, with race singled out as a key focus and evidence detailing tactics such as the use of deceased children’s identities and covert sexual relationships.
- Counsel for Neville Lawrence told the hearing police began gathering information about visitors to the family home the day after Stephen’s murder, with reporting that continued into the Macpherson Inquiry.
- Baroness Lawrence’s legal team said spying was sanctioned and rewarded by senior Metropolitan Police figures and cited indications of Home Office links, which the department’s counsel said are not supported by evidence of direct tasking.
- The Met’s counsel acknowledged serious wrongdoing by some undercover officers and serious mismanagement by SDS and special branch managers, but Baroness Lawrence rejected the force’s apology as impersonal and lacking contrition.
- Undercover officer HN81, known as David Hagan, is refusing to give oral evidence and plans a judicial review from overseas, prompting criticism over secrecy as whistleblower Peter Francis is scheduled to testify later in the process.