Victims of intrusive police surveillance have accused the government of seeking to cut short the spycops public inquiry that has been examining widespread misconduct committed by undercover officers.
The independent judge-led inquiry is scrutinising how officers, who spied on tens of thousands of political activists over more than four decades, carried out abuses such as deceiving women into sexual relationships and fathering children.
The inquiry has been running for more than a decade, and is expected to last another two years.
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said she is concerned about the length and cost of the process. It was set up in 2015 and was supposed to have been completed within three years. Latest figures show the inquiry, which has been led by retired judge Sir John Mitting, has so far cost £144m.
Mahmood initiated a public consultation, which closes on Sunday, that she said would help determine whether the inquiry should continue in a different format.
However, those who were spied on say that the Home Office is looking to severely limit or scrap the later stages, leaving the full extent of wrongdoing by the police hidden. They say more than 2,000 people have objected to what they believe would be a cover-up.
The spycops inquiry is one of the longest-running public inquiries. According to the House of Commons, the longest in modern times was an inquiry into a sectarian murder in Northern Ireland which reported last week, 22 years after being commissioned.
It has so far been investigating the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a Metropolitan police unit that infiltrated political groups between 1968 and 2008.
The inquiry has heard how the SDS officers formed long-term relationships with women without disclosing to them their true identity, spied on grieving families such as the parents of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, stole the identities of dead children and lied in court hearings.
It is due to examine a second undercover squad, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which infiltrated political groups between 1999 and 2011.
One of the unit’s key undercover officers was Mark Kennedy who infiltrated environmental and left-wing groups for six years. He deceived a large, but unknown, number of women into intimate relationships.
Environmental campaigners had their criminal convictions overturned because crucial evidence gathered by Kennedy was withheld from their trials.
The inquiry is also scheduled to look at the case of an undercover police officer who used his fake identity while infiltrating serious crime to deceive a woman into a 19-year relationship during which they had a child together.
Victims of the surveillance say that the consultation is phoney and rigged as it only offers three alternatives: an inquiry with a narrower remit, one that would not have legal powers to force reluctant witnesses to testify or asking the police to disclose documents to victims without any type of inquiry.
Kate Wilson, who was deceived into a two-year relationship by Kennedy, said: “Whatever the intentions of the Home Office in doing this, the practical effect of them curtailing the inquiry or reducing its powers to compel evidence will be a cover-up, and we may never understand the full extent of the misconduct that has occurred in undercover policing.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The historic failings in undercover policing continue to shock the public. We are determined to get justice and hold those responsible to account.
“However, the undercover policing inquiry was established more than a decade ago, and is yet to deliver justice for those affected, at significant cost to the taxpayer. It’s only right that we ask those affected themselves about the future of the inquiry.”
