A JUDGE-LED public inquiry will be held into the work of undercover police following a review into the original Stephen Lawrence murder investigation.
It found a Metropolitan Police ‘spy’ worked within the ‘Lawrence camp’ while a judicial inquiry into matters arising from Stephen’s death was under way.
Home Secretary Theresa May described the findings as ‘deeply troubling’.
The review also found there were ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect corruption by one police officer.
The review by Mark Ellison QC found no evidence of corruption by officers other than Det Sgt John Davidson.
But it said other lines of inquiry might be able to provide such evidence.
Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack by a gang of white youths as he waited at a bus stop in south-east London in April 1993.
In 2012, Gary Dobson and David Norris were found guilty of murdering the 18-year-old and sentenced to minimum terms of 15 years and two months and 14 years and three months respectively.
Allegations about Det Sgt Davidson were first made in a BBC programme in July 2006.
It reported former police detective Neil Putnam saying Det Sgt Davidson had taken a bribe from Clifford Norris, father of David Norris.
Prime Minister David Cameron described the review as ‘profoundly shocking’.
He tweeted: ‘Like the Home Secretary, I find the conclusions of the Stephen Lawrence review profoundly shocking. It’s important we have a full inquiry.’
The Chief Constable of Derbyshire, Mick Creedon and the Deputy Commissioner, Craig Mackey, are due to publish a copy of Operation Herne’s investigation into allegations made by Peter Francis.
Operation Herne is a review of undercover policing.
Former Scotland Yard undercover officer Peter Francis said he was instructed in 1993 to find information that could discredit the Lawrence family.
He told the Guardian and Channel 4’s Dispatches programme last year that he was told to pose as an anti-racism campaigner in a hunt for ‘disinformation’.
May added that the greatest possible scrutiny was required into what took place and only a public inquiry could do it.
Stephen’s mother Baroness Lawrence said of the report findings: ‘I’m not shocked. It’s something I suspected all along.’
A number of suspects were identified soon after Stephen’s 1993 murder but it took more than 18 years to bring his killers to justice.
Several attempts to prosecute the suspects, including a private prosecution by the family, failed owing to unreliable or insufficient evidence.
In 1997, then Home Secretary Jack Straw ordered a public inquiry into the killing and its aftermath after concerns about the way the police had handled the case.
Sir William Macpherson, a retired High Court judge, led the inquiry. He accused the police of institutional racism and found a number of failings in how they had investigated the murder.
In January 2012, Gary Dobson and David Norris were found guilty of murdering the 18-year-old.
Ellison, whose review was commissioned by the Home Secretary, said that Scotland Yard’s Anti-Corruption Command had held a debriefing with former police detective Neil Putnam in late 1998 in which he made claims against Davidson.
The report said the content of that debriefing and the intelligence picture suggesting Davidson was corrupt should have been revealed to the public inquiry led by Macpherson.
