Victims of intrusive police surveillance have accused the UK government of attempting to curtail the long-running public inquiry into undercover policing, warning that proposed changes by the Home Office risk concealing the full extent of institutional misconduct.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood initiated a public consultation, which closes Sunday, to determine whether the independent inquiry should continue under a revised format. Mahmood cited growing concerns over the length and financial cost of the proceedings, which have accumulated £144 million in expenditures since being commissioned.
The inquiry, chaired by retired judge Sir John Mitting, was established in 2015 and originally tasked with completing its work within three years. Now entering its second decade, the process is expected to run for another two years. Victims and campaign groups report that more than 2,000 people have lodged formal objections to the consultation, alleging that the Home Office intends to severely limit or eliminate the inquiry’s remaining phases.
The judge-led inquiry was established to scrutinize police operations spanning more than four decades, during which undercover officers spied on tens of thousands of political activists. Evidence submitted to the inquiry has detailed systemic abuses, including officers using fake identities to deceive women into intimate relationships, fathering children, stealing the identity details of deceased children, committing perjury in court, and spying on grieving families, such as the parents of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Proceedings to date have focused on the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a Metropolitan Police unit that operated between 1968 and 2008. The next phase is scheduled to examine the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), which infiltrated political groups from 1999 to 2011.
Among the cases designated for review in the upcoming phase is that of former NPOIU officer Mark Kennedy, who spent six years infiltrating environmental and left-wing organizations. Convictions against several environmental campaigners were subsequently overturned after courts determined that critical evidence gathered by Kennedy had been withheld from defense teams during their trials. The inquiry is also scheduled to examine an officer who used a covert identity to deceive a woman into a 19-year relationship that resulted in a child.
Critics of the consultation state that the Home Office framework presents an unduly restricted set of options, offering three alternatives that victims argue would hinder full disclosure. According to parliamentary records, the spycops inquiry stands as one of the longest-running public inquiries in modern British history, trailing major historical proceedings such as the 22-year inquiry into a Northern Ireland sectarian murder that concluded its report earlier this month.
Sources
– Guardian International: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/sep/20/victims-say-home-office-attempt-to-curtail-spycops-inquiry-will-result-in-a-cover-up
Source: Guardian International
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Story synopsis gathered from: Guardian International — source
