The Home Office must not be allowed to bury the spycops inquiry | Imran Khan

Doreen Lawrence and other victims of police surveillance have waited decades for justice.

Delays and expense due to Met intransigence are no excuse to deny them that In June 2013 Peter Francis, a former Metropolitan police officer, broke a 20-year silence about the role he had played in surveilling the family of Stephen Lawrence in a documentary jointly made by the Guardian and Channel 4’s Dispatches programme .

Two years later, thanks in part to the programme, the Home Office established an undercover policing inquiry , commonly known as the spycops public inquiry, to shed light on the scale of surveillance of activists and trade unionists.

That inquiry is now under threat.

Francis had served in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a Met unit founded in 1968 whose officers lived for years at a time inside political and campaigning organisations under false names.

Imran Khan KC is a practising solicitor Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

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