Part 3 — Findings: the conduct and validity of the consultation

3.1 The questionnaire's framing

Analysis of the available consultation responses demonstrates a total, unanimous rejection of the online survey's framing and methodology. Respondents across all categories — non-state Core Participants, Recognised Legal Representatives, non-governmental organisations, activist cohorts, and individual members of the public — argued that the online questionnaire issued by the Home Office on 16 July 2026 was structurally biased, methodologically defective, and designed to produce a predetermined result in favour of curtailing or shutting down the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

Respondents across all cohorts criticised the fact that the text of the online survey itself (Appendix 7.6) contains no option, in the multiple-choice grid or structured fields, for respondents to express support for the Inquiry continuing under its original Terms of Reference to full statutory completion across Tranches 4, 5 and Module 3. "Alison", a Category H Core Participant, put the point directly to the Home Office:

"My favoured option — which is to complete the Inquiry as it was originally scoped — does not appear in this consultation. Why not?"

— "Alison" (Category H Core Participant, 26 August 2026)

Respondents also pointed to the structure of the survey as evidence of a predetermined result. Question 4 asked respondents to rate the "relative importance" of Tranche 4, Tranche 5 and Module 3 on a 1-to-5 scale. Question 5 asked respondents to similarly rate seven specified outcomes on a 1-to-5 scale, explicitly juxtaposing statutory duties — such as "establishing findings of fact", "disclosure of relevant documentation to victims", and "public accountability" — against fiscal and temporal constraints ("delivering public value for money by prioritising concluding the Inquiry" and "delivery of timely conclusions by prioritising concluding the Inquiry"). Question 6 invited respondents to rate alternative, non-statutory options "if the Inquiry does not continue in its current form". Respondents argued that this design created a false dichotomy, treating core operational duties for any Inquiry as negotiable commodities to be weighed against administrative cost and duration.

"I am not responding via your online questionnaire. I am sure you are well aware by now that your questionnaire is unusable and should be scrapped. Asking victims of state-sanctioned abuse to score statutory truth-seeking and human rights accountability against financial 'value for money' on a numerical scale is morally indefensible. Establishing facts and ensuring public accountability for severe state wrongdoing are statutory duties under the Inquiries Act 2005. I reject the survey's forced-choice framing entirely, and I set out my position directly in this letter."

— "Tina" (Category H / Tranche 4 Core Participant, September 2026)

A third constraint was identified in the joint submission from Police Spies Out of Lives and Category H Core Participants: the survey's only free-text field was capped at 300 words, for an Inquiry that has run for over a decade and cost £137 million.

"The only space in the survey for anything outside a 1–5 rating is capped at 300 words. This is a ten-year inquiry that has cost £137 million and has heard evidence of women deceived into long-term relationships by officers who used dead children's identities, described in terms including state-sanctioned abuse. Two tranches covering thirteen years of undercover deployments have not yet been examined at all. A 300-word box is totally inadequate."

— Police Spies Out of Lives (September 2026)

The 2,627 signatories to the standard campaign letter (including personalised versions of that letter) (see Appendix 7.3) all endorsed this critique, supporting the finding that the choice not to use the online questionnaire was an intentional, unified rejection of an instrument respondents characterised as methodologically rigged.

3.2 Deconstructing the "Time and Money" Narrative

Across the consultation corpus, respondents advanced a four-part rebuttal of the Home Office's foundational justification for the consultation: the narrative that the Inquiry has taken too long and cost too much, and must therefore be curtailed or restructured in the interest of "public value for money." Respondents submitted that this narrative is factually inaccurate, methodologically selective, and procedurally perverse. They further submitted that the delays and high costs of the Inquiry are overwhelmingly state-manufactured, and that terminating the process now would squander sunk costs while rewarding state obstruction.

First, respondents argued that the primary driver of delay and cost has been state obstruction. Submissions across all non-state cohorts submitted that the Inquiry's eleven-year duration and the majority of the costs to the taxpayer — once uncounted state legal expenditure is included — has been substantially attributable to systematic obstruction, relentless anonymity applications, and chronic disclosure delays caused by state bodies. Respondents highlighted that during the Inquiry's first five years (2015–2020), state core participants engaged in exhaustive secrecy litigation, demanding blanket anonymity for hundreds of former undercover officers and managers, challenging disclosure protocols, and forcing dozens of closed interlocutory hearings before a single line of evidential testimony could be taken in public.

"It seems clear that these police applications for blanket anonymity, protracted restriction order hearings, and chronic disclosure delays, have not only caused inordinate delay but are responsible for a significant proportion of the total costs. Halting the Inquiry would effectively reward this institutional recalcitrance, while penalising the victims."

— Alan Watson (on behalf of PIRG Cymru, September 2026)

Second, others pointed out that the Home Office has provided no evidence to support its claims about "value for money":

"This page does not give enough evidence to make a proper judgement on these questions — and is obviously looking for a swift and cheaper conclusion which would vitiate the inquiry held to date and likely waste the money already invested."

— Duncan Law (Individual Consultation Respondent, August 2026)

"…we are implicitly told that 'value for money' can only be achieved by 'prioritising concluding the inquiry,' with no figures provided on cost to date, cost to complete, or how much already-spent money would be wasted if Tranches 4 and 5 were curtailed, and no explanation offered as to why the Inquiry has taken as long and cost as much as it has — above all the repeated anonymity applications, closed proceedings and judicial reviews brought by state core participants, which have driven the delay now being cited against the Inquiry continuing."

— Beth Stratford (Core Participant, 20 September 2026)

Third, submissions highlighted that the Home Office's £137 million figure is a selective accounting metric. It highlights the Inquiry's administrative running costs while concealing the expenditure incurred by state bodies in resisting disclosure, and it presents as a neutral cost of the process what respondents described as the cost of obstruction.

"The primary drivers of both delays and costs are the state and police core participants, who have systematically obstructed progress through endless, document-by-document anonymity applications, closed hearings, and excessive redactions… Additionally, the state's cited cost figures omit the estimated £62 million+ spent by the Metropolitan Police Service on its own legal representation as an active participant."

— Debbie Vincent (Non-state Core Participant, 10 September 2026)

"The redactions process involves eight or nine different state agencies checking every document before disclosure or publication, and incurs significant hidden, additional costs to the taxpayer that are not included in the £137 million figure the Home Office cites."

— Kate Wilson (Core Participant, September 2026)

The joint letter from the Non-Police Non-State Core Participants and their Recognised Legal Representatives, filed six days after the consultation launched, identified one specific instance of that obstruction and its consequences:

"The NPSCPs note that much of the cost and delay incurred by this Inquiry is a consequence of the excessive levels of secrecy demanded by the state (and police) in the Inquiry… There is an additional concern that the recent confirmation from the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) that they will no longer coordinate the privacy redaction process has sabotaged the Inquiry processes… Any change to the current format of the Inquiry as a result of the delays that this has created will incentivise more state obfuscation and delay and encourage a further drive for secrecy and lack of transparency."

— Non-Police Non-State Core Participants and Recognised Legal Representatives (22 July 2026)

Fourth, respondents argued that allowing state bodies to delay an inquiry and then citing that delay as a reason to terminate it would create a moral hazard and a dangerous constitutional precedent. Both the police service and the Home Office are subjects of investigation within the Inquiry's Terms of Reference, and permitting a state sponsor to weaponise time and cost metrics to curtail an inquiry into its own historical failures would constitute a gross conflict of interest.

"To reward state obstruction by closing the Inquiry prematurely would establish a dangerous precedent: that state bodies can escape accountability simply by making an investigation too slow and expensive to complete."

— Debbie Vincent (10 September 2026)

"The Inquiry has taken longer than expected because the police have repeatedly sought anonymity and protective measures, contested disclosure and otherwise placed obstacles in the path of establishing the truth. I am deeply concerned that bringing the Inquiry to a premature conclusion would effectively reward this conduct. If an institution can delay scrutiny for years and then rely upon the passage of time, cost and exhaustion as reasons to terminate that scrutiny, there is a serious risk that future institutions will learn the wrong lesson from this process."

— Gerrah Selby (Core Participant, September 2026)

"Throughout the last 11 years, and indeed since the first public revelations of abuse committed by undercover officers, the police have taken every opportunity to try to undermine those seeking the truth and to derail the inquiry. If the terms of reference were curtailed now, it would be a victory for the bodies that never wanted it to happen in the first place, and would reward their years of deliberate filibustering that continues to this day."

— Emily Apple (Core Participant, 20 September 2026)

3.3 Consultation Shortcomings

Respondents across the corpus submitted detailed legal arguments asserting that the Home Office consultation was unlawful on the basis that it breached all four limbs of the established common law standards for public consultation (the Gunning principles, as affirmed in R (Moseley) v Haringey LBC [2014] UKSC 56) as well as the Cabinet Office Consultation Principles 2018.

The four limbs of the Gunning principles require that:

• consultation must take place when proposals are still at a formative stage;
• the proposer must give sufficient reasons for any proposal to permit of intelligent consideration and response;
• adequate time must be given for consideration and response; and
• the product of consultation must be conscientiously taken into account when finalising any proposal.

Synthesising these procedural breaches, collective campaign cohorts submitted that the consultation process as a whole was fatally compromised and must be set aside.

"The Home Office must immediately withdraw all options proposing to alter, narrow, or truncate the Inquiry's original Terms of Reference. The Inquiry must remain statutory and be fully funded to complete Tranches 4 and 5, and Module 3, under the strict powers of the Inquiries Act 2005. We refuse to let our unexamined Tranche 4 evidence be discarded to satisfy a pre-negotiated £139.1 million budget cap."

— Reclaim the Streets Cohort (September 2026)

"The consultation is misconceived and it is incapable of leading to a better outcome. It should be withdrawn."

— Pete Weatherby KC (20 July 2026)

3.4 The Home Office's conflict of interest

A central finding across the corpus is that respondents identified a profound, structural conflict of interest in the Home Office's role as the arbiter of the consultation. Respondents emphasised that the Home Office is not a neutral administrative overseer; rather, it is a primary state party under active statutory investigation in Module 2(c) of the Inquiry, which is tasked with examining historical Home Office knowledge, authorisation, and management of covert political policing units. Respondents argued that allowing a state department whose own historical culpability remains unexamined to alter the scope, funding, or duration of the Inquiry investigating it constitutes a breach of basic principles of natural justice.

"The Home Office needs to acknowledge that it is itself under investigation, as are past Home Secretaries and Home Office ministers. As the inquiry gets closer to the present day, it becomes all the more important that the Home Office itself does not come under suspicion of wanting the inquiry curtailed because it has things to hide. Nor should it allow other vested interests to avoid accountability."

— Roger Geffen (T3 & T4 Core Participant, September 2026)

3.5 Non-representativeness of the online survey

With almost 2,700 respondents actively boycotting the Home Office online questionnaire in favor of detailed written filings, any statistical aggregation of the online survey data will reflect an unrepresentative sample that excludes the primary victims and active participants of the Inquiry. Core Participant "Lindsey" was one respondent to raise this concern:

"The design of the questionnaire itself constitutes a significant procedural unfairness, and I do not believe it can be relied upon to produce a fair or representative picture of public and core participant opinion."

— "Lindsey" (Category H Core Participant, 27 August 2026)

"Finally in terms of context, it is utterly disgusting that when a small group of us went to the Home Office on Friday 18th September to hand deliver over 2600 responses to your consultation, no-one from the Home Office was prepared to meet us to receive the submissions, despite us contacting you in advance and agreeing this. When three of us attempted to leave them in reception, the response was to assault core participants, lock-down the Home Office and call the police. Your press officer lied to us, telling us that a representative would meet us, and then separately emailing security to say they had no intention of meeting us… This lack of respect for survivors who've spent years of voluntary time engaging with a public inquiry shows the contempt your office has for core participants."

— Emily Apple (Core Participant, 20 September 2026)

"A small group of Core Participants turned up to hand-deliver people's responses to this consultation. Despite us letting you know in advance that we were coming, and phoning the press office when we arrived, and being told that someone would come to the door to take delivery, that group was left waiting outside for a very long time (well over an hour). It appears that somebody instructed the security guards not to allow the group inside, to leave the package of letters at reception, and somebody went to the extraordinary length of calling the police and telling them the building was 'under attack'."

— C Wilson (Core Participant, September 2026)