Home Office Could Shut Down Spycops Inquiry

The Home Office could shut down the public inquiry into political undercover policing, a senior civil servant told the Home Affairs Select Committee last week.

At a hearing on Wednesday 22 June 2022, Matthew Rycroft CBE, Permanent Secretary to the Home Office, was asked about the inordinate time and cost of the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

The Inquiry was first announced by the Home Secretary in March 2014. It has just finished hearing evidence about the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad’s first 14 years, 1968-82. It will not be having any more hearings until 2024, and those will only concern spycops from 1983 to 1992.

The Committee’s chair, Diana Johnson MP, told Rycroft that there were witnesses who fear they won’t live to give testimony. A number of victims granted ‘core participant’ status at the Inquiry have already died.

It applies to senior witnesses from the other side too – since the Inquiry was announced, two former Home Secretaries and three former Metropolitan Police Commissioners have died.

Rycroft told the Committee that the Inquiry ‘must get on with it’ and, although it is operationally independent of the Home Office, because it is commissioned and funded by the Home Office there is always the possibility that the Home Secretary could pull the plug.

He said it as something of an aside rather than a threat, but it’s a startling statement nonetheless. The gruelling extended delays have been largely down to the Met’s wilful stalling tactics, and the Inquiry indulging that strategy. The spycops were individually assessed and most of them granted anonymity. The process of excessive redaction of documents has taken further swathes of time.

To talk about positive aspects of shutting down the Inquiry, leaving the thousands of victims without any answers about what was done to them and why, demonstrates that the highest levels of the Home Office have a callous disregard for the harm inflicted on citizens by Britain’s political secret police.

Here is a transcript of the full exchange:

Diana Johnson: I just want to ask you one last question about the Undercover Policing Inquiry, which was supposed to have reported by 2018. It was set up in 2015 by the Home Secretary at that time. It has now been running for seven years, it has spent over £50,000,000 to date and only the first two of six tranches of work have been properly started.

There is no forecast information about the overall expected time it is going to run, nor the cost. Now, I have written to you about that Inquiry. I have had someone who is likely to be a witness to that Inquiry write to me and say that he doesn’t think he’ll be alive to
give evidence because of the time this Inquiry is taking.

The Home Office is the sponsoring Department. What do you have to say about the cost
and the length of time of this Inquiry?

Matthew Rycroft: I very much agree with you that the Inquiry needs to get on with it. It has been going on for a long time. Of course, it is hugely complex work and the Inquiry, as other inquiries, is operationally independent. It is up to them to work out how to fulfil their terms of reference and how to account for their budget, but it is a £50,000,000 budget and it is seven years and counting.

What the Chair has agreed to do, which I welcome, is to set out an interim report that I think will help to demonstrate that there has at least been some progress on some aspects – the things that were heard through that first phase of hearings.

Diana Johnson: Does that mean you just have to keep paying?

Matthew Rycroft: We don’t have to. Obviously, there is a choice, you know. The Home Secretary could choose to close down that Inquiry. Of course, there would be pros and cons to that. I think, as with all things, it’s a balance.

Getting to the truth is really important for that Inquiry and indeed for others, which is why it is taking time. But I think the rather practical consideration that you have mentioned about a potential witness who is presumably getting on in years, and we would all benefit from the Inquiry being able to hear the evidence of that witness before too long.

And so, rest assured that, in our sponsorship role, the Home Office – including myself, but mainly my colleagues – works closely with that Inquiry’s secretary and Chair in order to get a move on.

Video of the full hearing is on the Parliament TV site. The hearing was mostly concerned with treatment of refugees. The question about the Undercover Policing Inquiry is near the end, about 1 hour 42 minutes in.