UCPI Daily Report, 27 Nov 2025: ‘MWS’ & ‘MSS’ (family of Michael Menson) evidence

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 20
27 November 2025

INTRODUCTION

On the afternoon of Thursday 27 November 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry heard evidence from two witnesses whose names are being kept private, ‘MSS’ and ‘MWS’.

They are the sister and brother of Michael Menson, a Black musician who died in 1997 following a horrific racist attack. They are here to give evidence about the family’s subsequent campaign for justice, which was spied on by the Special Demonstration Squad.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups: the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

MSS and MWS have made two witness statements each to the Inquiry [MSS: UCPI0000038377 and UCPI0000039437, MWS: UCPI0000038379 and UCPI0000039441]. At the time of writing the Inquiry has yet to publish any of them.

The Inquiry’s page for the day has a transcript of the live session. In order to protect the family’s privacy, the video coverage was broadcast as audio-only.

MSS and MWS were questioned together by Lennart Poulsen, acting as Counsel to the Inquiry.

MICHAEL’S PERSONALITY

Poulson began by asking about Michael’s life and his character, to understand the kind of person he was.

‘MSS: I was struck by his quietness, his gentleness… maybe as siblings we were laughing at another sibling and he was never involved in that, he would never join in any kind of teasing or anything…

Even though I was his older sister he would check in… that’s my childhood memory of him, always being thoughtful.

One of my brothers broke his leg and I remember Mike being really, you know, caring of him…

We were kind of all a bit weird and all loved school, and he enjoyed that. I remember him going to school one day when he wasn’t very well, he was just desperate to go…

He was a singer, we sang in a church choir… he often sang the solo… but was always really unassuming about that.

I remember an occasion where I was singing a solo and I had to sing the word “psalms”. And it begins with a p, and for some reason I kept reading it with the word p, and he came and helped me practise so I could get it right, just even though it would have made much more sense for him to have done it because his voice was better…

Those little things were examples of what he was like as a child and as a person…

We had a little car washing round, we’d go round with our bucket of water and wash cars for our neighbours and things, we just did gentle things.

We were quite a quiet family. We didn’t do lots of activities, but we entertained each other and played with each other… there were some traditional Ghanaian stories that we’d sometimes be told and we particularly loved and we’d rehearse them with each other.

He did well at school. He just wasn’t any trouble, ever.’

Michael became part of the music group Double Trouble who enjoyed considerable success as performers and producers, including the massive 1989 hit Street Tuff with Rebel MC. The family were surprised but delighted.

‘MSS: You could really see him come alive… We are a family of kind of quite high moral values, and a religious family, and he wanted to make sure that his music career was still in line with us as a family, and including us.

I remember myself and some of the siblings going to recordings. He was inclusive and joyful and I think to some degree he just was really grateful for the success that they had’

Michael suffered some mental health difficulties in his late 20s. The family would have to take him to hospital. He was sad and confused about it, desperate to get back on track in life, and always saying sorry. His sister says he was always determined that his mental health problems would not defeat him.

On 28 January 1997, Michael Menson was attacked by a racist gang. They robbed him, doused him in highly flammable accelerant and set him on fire. He was taken to hospital having suffered extremely severe burns.

THE FAILED POLICE INVESTIGATION

The police visited the family home that same night and told them Michael had set fire to himself. However, MWS was able to visit Michael in hospital.

‘MWS: My initial conversation with Michael was to see how he was, and I was shocked, he was lying in the hospital bed on his back, he was alert, awake, lucid…he said that he’d been attacked by some boys… near a phone box, he had tried to put himself out.

He asked “why did they do this to me?” He said he had walked to try and put himself out, he had rolled around on the ground and some people came to his aid.’

To this day, the family have not received an explanation as to why the police never took a statement from him in the two weeks before he died.

‘MWS: using the payphone at the hospital I called the Edmonton police… asked them to come to the hospital, told them what Michael had told me. And it was vastly different to what I had been told at the house… I urged them to come and investigate what was going on…

I was told that the information would be passed on to the appropriate team. I made multiple calls … sometimes multiple times in a day, in the morning or in the evening or in other parts of the day.

At all stages I was expecting them to arrive at any moment and ask Michael themselves…

Until this day I don’t understand why that opportunity wasn’t taken and I’ve not [been] provided with any adequate answer as to why that might be.’

There are police reports [UCPI0000038691 and UCPI0000038692] that say a Detective Roger Williams did visit the hospital, but he did not speak to Michael. MSW says he never saw him.

Michael lost consciousness after a week in hospital, and he died on 13 February 1997.

‘MSS: I was working overseas at the time… by the time I travelled he’d been unconscious for a few days and he never regained consciousness… I went straight to the hospital and we stayed there until he died…

Human memory isn’t perfect, but what I remember, the images that are in my mind, is coming home and… we looked on the news. It was the day that the Stephen Lawrence inquest was reported on and I remember the police coming and on that day, the next day, one of them turning to the television and then turning to me and saying, “Oh don’t worry this isn’t another Stephen Lawrence”…

I remember the first time I heard it and just looking at them and thinking we haven’t even said anything, we have been saying why on earth did you not go to the hospital to speak to Mike himself when he was lucid? And why did you not go to the hospital and speak to the staff when he was alive?’

MSS explained that when she saw the coverage of the Lawrence inquest she almost felt guilty because it meant they’d get the kind of proper police response that had been denied to the Lawrences:

‘“Guilty” isn’t quite the right word, but of course now they’re going to investigate, they’re going to redouble their efforts, they’re really going to prove the narrative wrong…

There were racial motivation for them not investigating Stephen Lawrence’s murder. I just thought there’s no human way that they won’t think, okay, “let’s show everyone wrong, let’s prove them wrong”. And I felt guilty that we were sort of benefiting from the timing. Only to find that actually it was absolutely not the case.’

The police were defensive and evasive. They suggested that the family just couldn’t accept that Michael had done this to himself, insisting there was nothing to suggest that anybody else was involved and they were running their investigation on that basis.

MWS met with DCI Scott about five times:

‘He didn’t enjoy being asked questions about how they were investigating and examining Michael’s death, what they were doing, what resources were being deployed, what information that had been received…

The meetings became extremely defensive on their part… they didn’t accept that we would dare to question them and question their authority and their assessment of what had happened.’

THE FAMILY TAKE THE INITIATIVE

We were shown a document [UCPI0000038692] that records how DCI Scott told the family that if they made a complaint it would result in the police ceasing to pursue the investigation. Officers would ‘lack motivation’ if they were criticised by the family.

‘MSS: I remember a sense of real disbelief that we were being told this, but also a real anxiety; what if this was the case, what if unintentionally we hampered things…

But in the end we decided this is insanity… And we couldn’t run the risk of just waiting, just being fobbed off by them and holding off from complaining. It was a risk that we had to take, because nothing was being done.’

They engaged a solicitor, Mike Schwarz at Bindmans, to try to make the police do their jobs and investigate Michael’s death. DCI Scott was furious. A report was sent to Assistant Commissioner Dunn describing the family of Michael Menson as ‘openly hostile’.

‘MSS: It’s shocking, but also, it’s really deeply hurtful. Rather than recognising that we were people who were asking legitimate questions in a legitimate manner, as time was running away… they chose to characterise us as hostile.

Not at any point did they do what any thoughtful sensible person will have asked, which was ask why, why is this family upset?…

It felt like they were manipulating our vulnerability and trying to make us feel afraid to speak up and to ask, to talk about it.’

The hearing took its lunch break, during which Tom Fowler discussed the evidence with Zoe Young from Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance:

MSS and MWS also gave evidence about how the police sought to undermine their family.

‘MSS: I think they intentionally tried to, you know, divide and rule, pick us off, pick me off… perhaps because I was… a public servant, maybe they thought well, this person will get it, maybe I was just gullible… the way they pulled me aside, like you’re reasonable… was incredibly manipulative.

It was only when I spoke to some of my other siblings I thought, this is absolute manipulation and we need to stand up against this…

I feel disgusted. I do absolutely admit I do feel ashamed, because it wasn’t as if instantly I thought no, this is nonsense. I did weigh it up, I contemplated, could there be any truth in this? Could we be unintentionally impeding things?…

They must just have looked at me and thought, you know, she’s a soft touch. “She’s a soft touch, we’ll pull her over on our side and we’ll get her to promulgate our narrative”. And that does not feel good.’

MEDIA APPEALS

The Menson family asked the police to appeal for witnesses, but they were told it would only hinder the investigation.

‘MSS: It became clear to us that they were more intent in getting information from us – what were we thinking, what were our concerns, what was our fears – rather than actually giving us information.

They should’ve been supporting us and updating us, but they were just trying to mine us for, sort of our position. And we saw nothing happening…

They said, “oh no, we’ll get so much, we’ll be inundated with information, it will put us off, it will squander resources, it will take us off track”

We thought, this is nonsense, they’re not doing anything, we have to take matters into our own hands.’

The family began to reach out to the media, and made their own appeal.

‘MWS: The reports in the media didn’t reflect at all what we knew. The actions of the police didn’t reflect an investigation, and so we came to the view that we would need to raise awareness, to gain information and collect any remaining available information that was out there.

And that was the sole purpose of the campaign, was to draw attention to the events of that night and to make sure that anybody who could assist us would assist us if they saw a media report or had been given a leaflet or had seen a radio interview.’

MWS says there was never any kind of political objective to the campaign. It was only ever about finding out what happened to Michael.

When the family contacted the media they discovered the police had got there before them. We were shown part of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) report into the investigation into Michael’s death [UCPI0000038745].

The PCA concluded:

‘Deliberate steers were given to members of the media that Michael Menson had probably inflicted the injuries on himself…

Scott’s behaviour in his dealings with the family over media issues was, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, duplicitous, deceitful and untruthful…

His strategy to play the media low key for much of the first 12 months and principally to concentrate on local circulation was a serious flaw.’

MSS explained how at all times, and particularly throughout the inquest into Michael’s death, the police overtly lied to the family and kept them away from the press.

During the PCA process, Detective Chief Inspector Scott himself was interviewed about this by Cambridgeshire police for ten hours over four days, throughout which he refused to make any comment.

MSS has no doubt that DCI Scott misled and manipulated both the press and her family. She cannot understand why, as it must have been harder to do this than his actual job!

GATHERING ALLIES

The Menson family campaign was supported by Suresh Grover and The Monitoring Group, who had experience supporting families in a similar position.

‘MWS: I met with him. I examined the work that he’s been doing with other families and determined that it wasn’t political… there was caution applied to everybody we met to make sure that we weren’t derailed, either by design or by accident…

The request for information and Michael’s name was always at the forefront, because everything else was secondary…

There’s nobody else to wrest control from us, we took measures to make sure that we were the campaign. He [Suresh] introduced us to other families, which also enabled us to put into context what was happening to us… to see that we are not alone…

I attended many meetings, and I spoke at a number of meetings… Spoke with other families and saw the similarities with the problems they had, and drew energy from that to continue.’

At this point in the hearing, Poulson posed a series of those questions the Inquiry loves to ask about whether there was any disorder, confrontation or illegality involved.

This line of questioning felt particularly inappropriate in the light of the very measured evidence we had heard from the Menson family, of their genuine faith that the police would do their jobs properly and their absolute disbelief at what happened to them.

We were shown SDS reports that mischaracterised a number of justice campaigns as ‘disruptive’ [MPS-0001643], and ‘angry and confrontational’ [MPS-0001717]. The SDS described a demonstration in support of the family of Roger Sylvester who had been unlawfully killed by police in 1999:

‘The potential troublemakers were not members of any group but people from the local community and they proved impossible to control.

An example of this was when an unmarked police car was discovered, parked, with three officers inside it. It was immediately attacked by the crowd and the driver of the vehicle bid [sic] a hasty retreat. This incident highlighted the fact that the crowd were ready to attack the police, given an opportunity.’

MWS is asked what he thinks of this last report:

‘I didn’t see any attacks… I think it’s a fiction.’

In August 1997, the police submitted reports to the Met’s solicitors and the coroner which included shocking and disturbing claims about the family:

‘It has been clear from the outset of this enquiry that the Menson family will never accept any explanation other than murder.

Whether this is done to alleviate any senses of guilt for any perceived lack of family support while he was alive or is merely for future financial gain is unknown.

Without doubt though the family have attacked the police handling of the enquiry from the outset and in addition have attempted to initiate media criticism through their associates in the music and press world.’

THE INQUEST

Finally, in September 1998, there was an inquest into Michael Menson’s death. All the questioning was based on the idea that Michael had inflicted his injuries on himself. However, the jury reached a verdict of unlawful killing.

The police were incensed that they had been exposed and found wanting, and that their attempts to shape the outcome had failed.

DCI Scott refused to change his mindset. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he said he still believed that Michael Menson had killed himself.

We were shown a Channel 4 News interview on the day of the verdict with Mike Bennett of the Police Federation [UCPI0000038704].

Bennett had not been at the inquest to hear the evidence. He criticised the coroner’s verdict, alleged the family ‘crowded out the inquest’ and ‘intimidated’ the coroner, and claimed that ‘it stinks’.

The family’s solicitor Mike Schwarz is also interviewed. He corrected Bennett, pointing out he had been proven wrong and didn’t even attend the inquest. Bennett then criticised Schwarz and insulted the family.

After the inquest, the Metropolitan Police issued a statement admitting serious mistakes had been made during the first 12 hours of the investigation.

‘MSS: This phrase “the first 12 hours”… you do nothing at all for the first 16 days and you keep harking back to the fact that there was some failings in the first 12 hours.

It’s all minimising just how inadequate the investigation was… Let’s deny how wilfully we have chosen to protect ourselves rather than to investigate this crime…

This isn’t accidental… all those choices were kind of uphill choices, they weren’t easy, they actively chose to take a certain line and then stick to it. Despite repeated evidence and outcomes, such as the inquest, outcomes to the contrary…

Language really matters. I’ve talked about ‘hostile’, I’ve talked about ‘obstructive’, but there was all sorts of language like ‘flaws, failings, inept, inadequate’, those imply sort of accidental, incompetent sort of normal human failings of a public servant.

That’s not what was seen here, there’s more than enough evidence to show that these were intentional wilful lies that were told, and for which people have not been held and brought to account.’

On 25 September 1998, Bindmans solicitors submitted a complaint to the Police Complaints Authority. The Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire, Dennis ‘Ben’ Gunn, was appointed to investigate the family’s criticisms of the police’s investigation into Michael’s death.

The result of that investigation was the damning PCA report from which we have been shown extracts throughout the hearing.

On 3 November 1998, the family was invited to meet the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw:

‘MSS: We told him… how we’d been treated, how they tried to vilify us and imply that we were either mad or just or sad or guilty, that… we were trying to hide our own guilt or whatever…

He did look visibly shocked, he did look like [he had] a sense of oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening… what I remember was kind of the visceral sense that came from his voice, which was of shock.’

The following day it was decided that Michael’s case would be taken over by John Grieve and the Met’s newly-formed Racial and Violent Crime Task Force. Grieve met with the family, and told them his unit was going to take it from there.

He also told them that, first of all, they knew this was a murder, and secondly, they knew who did it.

‘MSS: When Area Major Incident Pool took over from the local team in Edmonton, they sort of said, “it’s okay, this is what we do, we’re the professionals, step back because we’ll do it all”.

So there was a bit of a sense of oh gosh not again, but also hope, real hope… I also had a sense that, you know, there was a possibility that this may be a bit of a trophy case, you know?

But to be honest… I was willing to live with that if they kind of said, “oh look we are, sort of knights in shining armour, we’ve solved it”. I was willing to live with it if it get to the truth.’

SPYING ON THE MENSON FAMILY

It is notable that when the Undercover Policing Inquiry heard evidence from Doreen Lawrence about the SDS spying on her family, John Grieve’s name also came up.

There is a briefing note about the Macpherson inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s death [MPS-0720946] in which Operation Commander Colin Black comments:

‘SDS is, as usual, well positioned at the focal crisis points of policing in London…

I have established a correspondence route to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Grieve via Detective Sergeant McDowell, formerly of SO12 [Special Branch], and opened an SP file for copy correspondence with CO24 [Grieve’s Racial and Violent Crime Task Force].’

From November 1998 to March 1999, Grieve also ran the second investigation into the death of Ricky Reel. This was another racist murder that the police were denying. Grieve’s investigation in that case was a whitewashing exercise that confirmed the original inadequate conclusions.

It is therefore significant that Grieve led the final investigation into Michael Menson’s murder, given that the Lawrence, Reel and Menson families were all targeted by the SDS.

Two arrests were finally made in March 1999. A third person fled to North Cyprus and was later arrested there. The court found that it had been a racially motivated attack. All three were convicted and sentenced to 10 to 14 years in prison. The family sat through the trials.

MSS explains to the hearing that her brother, MWS, stood firm because he had heard Michael say he’d been attacked. It was so much harder for her and she came close to giving up. She became very emotional describing this, and the Inquiry hearing took an unscheduled break.

MSW, Michael’s brother, first became aware that his family had been subjected to covert surveillance when it was mentioned during the trial of Michael’s murderers at the Old Bailey, in December 1999.

We were shown a Special Branch note on left wing activity in relation to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. It mentions Michael Menson’s case, along with a handwritten note stating that John Grieve would be briefed on SDS intelligence [MPS-0748390]. This report is from some time in late 1998. It appears Grieve was being briefed by Special Branch about the family while he was investigating Michael’s case.

‘Q: How does it make you feel, at the point where you thought you were finally being taken seriously by the police, that it was seemingly the case that they were at the same time spying, or at the very least had knowledge of spying, by undercover officers on your family?

MSS: That sense of disbelief… to sweep in and say, you know, “We know it was murder, we know it was who it was”, but to conceal.

This wasn’t accidental omission, this was, you know, I’ve used the word “manipulation” so many times, but I can’t understand how this is anything other than intentional….

What if the trial hadn’t led to convictions? What if this stuff had got in the way of finding justice? … they risked so much… I cannot understand how people of this seniority think that’s okay.’

We were then shown further extracts from the PCA report, about the police’s attitude to the Menson family in March 1997.

The briefing note about Michael’s death that was prepared for Assistant Commissioner Dunn said of the family:

‘Their current attitude is now one of open hostility.’

On the same day this note was submitted, a message was entered onto HOLMES (the police internal database), which noted that Detective Superintendent Duffy had suggested that Special Branch background checks should be completed on all the Menson family prior to further interviews with them.

The PCA report notes:

‘An inference which could be drawn from that proposed line of enquiry is that the family of a murder victim were having security checks carried out on them with Special Branch to see if they had any involvement in extremist politics.

It is unclear precisely why such checks were made, but the description of the family as “hostile” may have inferred that such behaviour had some political motivation.’

Michael’s siblings are asked why they think the police put their family under surveillance.

‘MWS: This was a scheme to collect anything that can diminish us as a campaign and a family and find any information that they can use to discredit us, and use to shut down the family campaign by whatever means that they could find. That’s the conclusion I draw from that.

MSS: This has nothing to do with the case at hand, it was a diversion. We aren’t, we never have been, you know – what if we had been a family with a history as such? It still would’ve been completely irrelevant.

And what their duty was, was to investigate the crime or whatever they thought had happened, to find that out. And instead they were focusing energy and time and resources on this.’

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

MWS explained to the Inquiry the function of the police using the word ‘hostile’ to describe the family. It dehumanised them and, by characterising them as difficult to work with, made it possible for successive police officers to dismiss them.

The PCA report notes:

‘The evidence indicates that the culture which served as the “sense-making and control mechanism” for the police officers dealing with the Menson case was one which sadly displayed the characteristics of institutional racism…

The shared belief system was evident in documents such as the draft report to the Home Office after the inquest and the failure of senior officers to challenge the views expressed.

There was an absence of the control mechanism that should have acted to check and challenge the mindset and/or behaviour of individual officers.

The organisational culture meant that essential critical questions were never asked, misrepresentations were perpetuated and initial failures were compounded rather than corrected.

In this case, it is judged that the initial racist stereotyping led inexorably to institutional discrimination.’

The police had put all their energy into smearing the family. The fact that they were a Black family played a significant role in the police response.

As awareness increased of the issues emerging from the Lawrence inquiry, instead of trying to correct the wrongs, the response became to try to discredit the Menson family in order to protect the Metropolitan Police from criticism.

The PCA report records not only institutional but also overt acts of racism. One officer is quoted as saying:

‘Why are you all making all this fuss? He’s only a fucking black schizophrenic.’

COLLATERAL INTRUSION

Neither MSS nor MWS recall knowing the spycops who reported on them (HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’ and HN43 Peter Francis). Like other grieving families, they have been told that the spying on them was ‘collateral intrusion’. MWS defined this in his witness statement as:

‘The routine gathering of private, often deeply personal information about individuals who are not suspected to have any wrongdoing.

This indiscriminate approach meant that campaigners, their families and even bystanders could find themselves under unwarranted scrutiny with little regard for their right to privacy.’

MSS says she was utterly shocked by the spycops revelations, and by this flimsy rationale for why they were spied on when they were most vulnerable.

‘It felt like a gut punch… no rationale was given to spying on us at a time when we were clearly at our most vulnerable….

It wasn’t collateral because it was targeted and intentional, there was nothing collateral about what I’ve seen.

But, secondly, that isn’t okay… if people are going to undertake undercover surveillance, there has to be a robust system to justify that it’s warranted and that it’s relevant, that it’s necessary, and that there aren’t any other routes. And none of those existed for us…

To exploit our vulnerability and to fish for anything you can use against us, it’s inhumane.’

EMPTY APOLOGIES

We were shown a letter of apology to MSS, signed by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Jon Savell, sent on 31 October 2025. It is placed alongside a letter sent to Sukhdev Reel and they are exactly the same.

MSS is furious:

‘What a copy and paste job to send to us! And 31 October, why send an apology now, in the middle of the Inquiry?

Where in the apology does it say what they are apologising for? Where in the apology does it actually give any sense of the scale of this, the who, when, why?

We know that documents were destroyed. There’s a vast amount that we know we don’t know that isn’t referred to there.

So this is a real sort of “I’m sorry you feel that way” apology, which is worse than apology, it makes absolutely no sense.’

MWS and MSS were asked about the long-term impacts of the spying on their family.

MSS explained that covert surveillance affects who you are to the core, and how you engage with the world. She felt real fear around her work, knowing the police were so intent to discredit them:

‘Would other people suffer because the Metropolitan Police Service was so intent in trying to find things to use against us?’

It took personal therapy for an extended period of time to come to terms with what was done, and to believe that people are good.

‘MSS: The costs to us individually and as a family has been huge. I’m not going to go into the detail of that because other family members haven’t been able to withstand this.

But it’s important to know that while partners, families, children, the time that we’ve spent in all of this, the impact of having to go back on this again, that impacts us, it changes, it affects who you are as a person, how you engage with people that you care for or love or are with. And that isn’t okay. That is absolutely not okay.

So yeah, to find ourselves in another inquiry, it’s hard, it’s really very, very difficult’

She also criticised the decision to allow SDS officer HN81 Dave Hagan to get out of appearing at the inquiry:

‘Why are you letting people not give evidence, people who should be called to account, not to give evidence?…

As I understand it, the reasoning is post-traumatic stress disorder. Did they not imagine we have post-traumatic stress from this whole experience that’s gone on for nearly 29 years?…

We are grateful for the invitation to appear at this Inquiry, but it was not an easy decision to make. At all…

We are here because we felt we had a really strong moral imperative to do so, to be willing to go through all of this again.’

They spoke about their expectations for the Inquiry:

MWS explained:

‘We need to know why, we need to know where, we need to know when, who authorised it, the chain of command that reviewed it, what level within the police, and who knew, who agreed it, who was happy to read those reports and who didn’t question.’

MSS said that she hopes the Inquiry is able to get to the truth to help the family come to a place of understanding:

‘One of the biggest pains that people can have is not understanding, not understanding why we as normal, quiet, publicly-minded lawful people were treated in this way…

It’s really important that this Inquiry isn’t another empty exercise. That even though records have been destroyed, even though people are allowed to say, “I’ve got post-traumatic stress, I’m not going to give evidence”, that’s not allowed to end there.

There has to be a way of ensuring that public-serving organisations learn. Nobody’s perfect, but there’s a difference between being imperfect and wilfully being harmful…

Let’s leave, all of us leave this, knowing that we’ve made a difference.’

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, thanked them at the end. He said their evidence had made clear to him things which, as dramatic as they are on paper, have now been fully brought to life. He says he leaves with the hope that common humanity will eventually prevail.

At the end of the hearing, Tom Fowler discussed what had been said with Eveline Lubbers of the Undercover Research Group: