Theresa May will today meet the Stephen Lawrence family amid calls for a new public inquiry into claims that police secretly hunted for information to smear their campaign.
Michael Mansfield QC, who represents the family of murdered student Stephen, said they also wanted the investigation to look at all cases of undercover activity carried out by Scotland Yard's former Special Demonstration Squad throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
It follows claims by one of the squad's former undercover officers, Peter Francis, that he was told to dig up "dirt" on the Lawrence family and their campaign for justice after Stephen's death in 1993, as well as allegations that officers secretly bugged meetings they held with the murdered teenager's friend Duwayne Brooks and his lawyers.
Mr Mansfield said Stephen's father Neville wanted to know the truth about the allegations and the now disbanded Special Demonstration Squad, which is already subject to an inquiry.
He said: "What Neville is asking for is an inquiry of the kind we had in the first place looking into not just the Lawrence case, but all these cases where this (Special Demonstration Squad) has been operating using deceit – it's institutionalised deceit.
"We're going to see the Home Secretary, and I can assure the public that that's what we're going to be asking the Home Secretary to be considering, establishing a proper, public, transparent inquiry."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article