Background Information

More Info on the Inquiry

Launched in 2015 to investigate spying on political activists and campaigns for justice, the Undercover Policing Inquiry has just finished open hearings for Tranche 3, covering the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) up to 2008. A final report on the SDS is due in 2027.

However, there is still another unit that hasn’t yet been touched by the inquiry—the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), covering undercover policing in social movements from 1999–2011, originally meant to be covered in Tranche 4.

There are Spycops’ survivors who’ve been waiting since 2015 for disclosure on this unit, only to have the Home Office threaten the future of the inquiry just when this was supposed to start. This is not justice.

The abuses & issues exposed in Tranche 3 also apply to Tranche 4. There will be others, including likely miscarriages of justice that we often only discover through disclosure. Tranche 5 is supposed to investigate other undercover police activities, and is to make much needed recommendations for the future of undercover policing.

What The Inquiry Has Achieved & Exposed So Far

So far the inquiry has uncovered:

  • Officers who deceived women into long term relationships described by some managers as ‘state-sanctioned rape’.
  • Police stealing the identity of dead children for their undercover identity.
  • Spying on justice campaigners and grieving families.
  • Spying on trade unionists and elected politicians.
  • Collusion with private companies, including firms blacklisting trade unionists.
  • Miscarriages of justice and deceiving the courts.
  • Officers acting as agent provocateurs and playing pivotal roles in organising criminal activity.
  • Deliberate attempts to disrupt and destroy political organising.
  • A racist, misogynistic policing unit that subverted any notion of democracy, prepared to break any laws or spend unthinkable amounts of money to protect itself.

This isn’t just historical. The legacy of political policing in the SDS and Special Branch, revealed in the inquiry, is very much in evidence in TODAY’s climate of political repression. This is even more the case with Tranche 4.

What This Is About & Why It Matters

The government has launched a consultation on the future of the Undercover Policing Inquiry. On the surface, it asks for your views. In practice, it's framed around the assumption that the Inquiry might not continue—and it asks you to choose between alternatives that all involve truncation or abandonment.

Tranche 4 (the NPOIU) and Tranche 5 (all other undercover policing) remain unexamined. The NPOIU was created at the same time as RIPA—the law that still governs undercover policing today. If the Inquiry stops now, we will never know whether RIPA actually protects us, or whether it was always a failure.

The Inquiry has already revealed miscarriages of justice at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Drax, Fairford, and the SHAC cases. It has identified 25 women deceived by undercover officers—the "Cat H" group—who have not yet had disclosure or a chance to give evidence.

If the Inquiry ends now:

  • These women will never receive full accountability
  • The full extent of police wrongdoing will never be known
  • Miscarriages of justice will remain unexamined
  • The government will have succeeded in burying the truth

Why The Inquiry Is Taking So Long

The Home Secretary's statement claims the Inquiry has taken too long and cost too much. It doesn't mention that the police caused the delays through endless anonymity applications and obstruction of disclosure. It doesn't mention that the government itself failed to properly resource the Inquiry from the start.

We demand that evidence is disclosed to core participants earlier, & hearing transcripts are published faster, following a clear process that prevents deliberate delays by the state & ensures openness.

Why We Are Boycotting The HO Consultation

What the government is really doing

The consultation asks you to rate the "importance" of the remaining work—but it doesn't ask whether you think the Inquiry should continue. It asks which "alternative approach" you prefer—but it doesn't offer "continue as is" as an option. It limits written responses to 300 words and uses multiple-choice questions that steer you toward a predetermined outcome.

This is not a genuine consultation. It's a box-ticking exercise designed to legitimise shutting down an Inquiry that has already uncovered serious wrongdoing.

Key Reasons For The Boycott:

  1. Refusal to Meet Victims: In 2024 the Home Office Sponsor Department refused our request to meet with survivors to discuss ways to improve the inquiry. Instead they created this consultation to seek validation for a decision already made.
  2. Flawed & Manipulative Questions: The consultation forces you to rank fact-finding, giving voice to victims, accountability, and recommendations against each other as competing priorities. They are inseparable parts of any meaningful inquiry!
  3. Voting in a Vacuum: You are asked to rate alternatives (like "more limited terms of reference") without any actual information on what those terms would be.
  4. Violates Consultation Principles: It violates the government’s own Consultation Principles 2018, which require clear, informative background to enable informed responses.

DO NOT FILL IN THEIR SHAM FORM

Use our campaign response tool to submit your demands directly to the Home Office.

TAKE ACTION NOW →
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