Neville Lawrence welcomes chance for undercover police evidence to be aired

The father of Stephen Lawrence has welcomed the chance for evidence to be heard in public about how undercover police officers infiltrated the justice campaign for his son.

Neville Lawrence said the surveillance by police moles who posed as anti-racism campaigners in the late 1990s was “bewildering and insulting”.

He spoke out ahead of the next stage of a mammoth public inquiry into Metropolitan Police spies which is due to begin on Monday.

This section covers the activities of the shadowy Special Demonstration Squad between 1993 and 2007, including the aftermath of Stephen’s murder.

In a statement through his solicitor Hodge Jones and Allen, Mr Lawrence said: “The use of undercover officers to gather information about my family is yet another example of wrongdoing by the Metropolitan Police, an organisation that has let me down time and time again.

“After Stephen’s death, the police should have been bringing my son’s racist murderers to justice.

“Instead, police officers intruded on the privacy of my family to try to discredit our campaign for justice and protect the reputation of the police force.

“This surveillance, as if I were some kind of criminal, is bewildering and insulting.

“I welcome the opportunity for the evidence about this to be heard in public.”

The public inquiry into undercover policing was announced by then-home secretary Theresa May in 2015, after former officer Peter Francis turned whistleblower.

He told The Guardian newspaper that he had been tasked with gathering information to smear the Lawrence family, something the Met has always denied.

It has already emerged that one undercover officer who used the fake name David Hagan, as well as Mr Francis, joined Movement for Justice in the late 1990s and remained a member for two or three years.

This was during the Macpherson public inquiry into both Stephen’s murder and the alleged corruption, racism and incompetence that dogged the police investigation into his death.

Mr Francis attended the inquiry pretending to be a supporter of the Lawrence campaign, while feeding information back to colleagues in the Met.

In August 1998 he met with acting detective inspector Richard Walton, who was working on Scotland Yard’s final submissions to the inquiry, and passed on details he had gathered while undercover.

They included the fact that Stephen’s parents had separated but also information about the “progress, reasons and details of the decisions made by the Lawrence family connected to the inquiry”.

In 2014 a report on undercover policing by barrister Mark Ellison QC alleged that Mr Walton “obtained information pertaining to the Lawrence family and their supporters, potentially undermining the inquiry and public confidence”.

He said that had the officer’s presence been revealed, it would have caused “public disorder of a far more serious kind than anything envisaged by the original undercover deployment”.

The latest stage of the public inquiry follows a parole hearing for one of Stephen’s killers, David Norris, which is due to conclude on Friday.

Giving evidence on Tuesday he expressed remorse for his role in the killing for the first time, but refused to reveal the names of the other members of the racist gang who killed Stephen.

Stephen’s mother Baroness Doreen Lawrence said Norris is a coward and she does not believe his remorse is genuine.

If the hearing finishes as expected on Friday, the Parole Board panel will make a decision in two weeks as to whether Norris is ready for release.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Ward said: “Officers have been closely monitoring David Norris’ parole hearing and we remain committed to achieving the arrest, prosecution and conviction of all of those responsible for Stephen’s murder.

“We have commissioned the College of Policing to conduct a review of the investigations since October 2013 into the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

“The review is being conducted independently of the Metropolitan Police and we give it our full backing and support.

“The review is being led by an experienced investigator working for the College and will focus on identifying any outstanding lines of enquiry which could reasonably lead to a suspect being brought to justice.”