Part 4 — Findings: the importance of the Inquiry

4.1 What the Inquiry Has Already Established

Across the consultation corpus, respondents submitted that the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) has exposed a scale, depth, and systemic pattern of state wrongdoing that was previously unknown and unsuspected prior to the statutory process. Respondents argued that because secret political policing units operated in conditions of total opacity — shielded by the principle of "Neither Confirm Nor Deny" (NCND), official secrecy, and corporate police resistance — none of the major discoveries concerning state misconduct emerged through voluntary police candour or internal reviews. Instead, respondents submitted that this evidence surfaced solely because the Inquiry exercised its compulsory statutory powers under the Inquiries Act 2005 to force the production of contemporary police archives, disclose those records to non-state Core Participants (CPs), and subject police officers and managers to live oral cross-examination under oath.

Submissions across all respondent cohorts — including legal representatives, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), activist groups, and individual Core Participants — catalogued the discovery of specific incidents that were not in the public domain prior to the Inquiry's evidence hearings.

Fabricated allegations and undisclosed surveillance

Core Participant Ben Leamy detailed how statutory disclosure in Tranche 3 revealed an unsuspected breadth of state surveillance and active police corruption, including the fabrication of intelligence:

"The disclosure I received in T3 revealed that the extent of the reporting, and the impact of undercover policing on my life, extended considerably beyond the two incidents I was aware of, where the involvement of undercover officers in court processes had not been disclosed… Disclosure I received in T3 included shocking and entirely untrue allegations of serious criminality recorded about me in police files and retained for more than 20 years without corroboration."

— Ben Leamy (Tranche 3 & 4 Core Participant, 7 September 2026)

Forgery, embezzlement, and intimate deceit

This finding, that statutory disclosure to civilian witnesses was an indispensable catalyst for uncovering police illegality, was reinforced in the joint representation submitted by Police Spies Out of Lives (PSOOL) on behalf of female Category H Core Participants. Their submission emphasized that state witnesses routinely denied their own misconduct or any knowledge of misconduct by other officers, in sworn witness statements, only for those denials to be demolished when civilian participants cross-referenced police records against their own personal archives:

"One key lesson is that the scope of the abuse uncovered by the evidence goes far beyond what anyone knew or expected at the outset, and that few or none of those discoveries resulted from state witnesses candidly volunteering the truth. On the contrary, it was only through disclosure of contemporary documents to civilian witnesses and hearing our evidence, that the full extent of the wrongdoing became apparent. Examples of this include… New cases of deceitful sexual relationships that were denied by the officers, (such as HN60, who signed a witness statement declaring that he had no such relationship but is now due to give evidence on 21 September about a relationship uncovered by non state core participants)… Evidence of forgery and embezzlement by undercover officer Carlo Soracchi and his managers in the fake 'rent book' that, had it not been disclosed to Donna McLean, might easily have been mistaken for a mundane accounting document… Written evidence of management awareness of deceitful sexual relationships that undermines their 'memory loss' and denials."

— Police Spies Out of Lives / Category H (September 2026)

Intelligence files on newborn children

Submissions provided granular evidence of systemic state practices that extended far beyond political activists to target infants and peripheral family members. Core Participant Emily Apple described how disclosure revealed that Special Branch had opened a police intelligence file on her newborn child within days of his birth — a practice of targeting children that was completely unknown to participants prior to the Inquiry:

"One of the most disturbing parts of my disclosure was the reporting on my baby. I was already aware that HN3 knew my child, and one of my exhibits was a photograph of the polar bear cuddly toy that he gave him when he was two weeks old. However, I did not expect to see an intelligence report, filed within days of his birth, containing his full name, date of birth, his father's name, and the origins of his middle name, as well as a research box showing that a Special Branch search had been conducted on him, revealing 'no trace'."

— Emily Apple (Core Participant, 20 September 2026)

Deliberate interference with civil liberties

Disclosure in the Inquiry also uncovered deliberate state strategies to subvert civil liberties and undermine democratic organizing. In its submission, the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) highlighted how statutory disclosure revealed internal Special Branch decision logs demonstrating that police actively plotted to harass legal political campaigns and suppress public messaging:

"During the hearings for tranches two and three we were very disturbed to learn the extent to which groups advocating police accountability were targeted by Special Branch and its undercovers… It was long suspected that police had a policy of imposing bail conditions that deliberately interfered with individuals Article 10 and 11 rights, it took the UCPI to produce evidence this was the active thinking behind police actions. We can cite, for example, Operation Apache, which Special Branch plotted to target print shops, seize publicity material, raid homes and single people out for 'generalised harassment', all in the interest of preventing a political message and disrupting a group from organising…"

— Network for Police Monitoring / Netpol (September 2026)

Invention and racial profiling

Core Participant Guy Taylor detailed how the statutory process forced the revelations about exaggerated and fabricated reporting by UCO Simon Wellings:

"In a desperate bid to justify his deployment, Wellings pointed the finger at a young Asian activist (anonymised as 'MT'), alleging a plot involving a suicide vest. It was a complete invention, a toxic mix of self-aggrandisement and racial profiling designed to manufacture a threat where none existed… The truth emerged only due to disclosure and the questioning of Wellings. When the Inquiry began, I was under the impression that Simon Wellings was a genuine activist who had had his arm twisted into giving intelligence to the police. It was only during the Inquiry that we established that Wellings was a police officer, what kind of information he gathered and how he operated. This Inquiry has already been invaluable to me, and I believe it can be equally essential to other people wronged by intrusive police surveillance…"

— Guy Taylor (Core Participant, September 2026)

4.2 What the Inquiry Has Not Yet Examined, and Why It Matters

Respondents highlighted the fact that curtailing or substantially altering the structure of the Inquiry at this late stage would leave some victims without redress. The decision (taken many years ago) to take a chronological rather than a thematic or other approach to the investigation was largely arbitrary and means many Core Participants have yet to receive answers about the events that impacted them. Respondents argue that a decision that denies redress to some victims simply because it has taken too long to get to those events would be profoundly unfair.

Respondents across the corpus advanced a second shared position: that the work remaining to be conducted in Tranche 4 (the National Public Order Intelligence Unit / NPOIU, 1999–2011), Tranche 5 (other undercover policing activity, 1968–present), and Module 3 (current practices and future recommendations) is qualitatively more significant, contemporary, and institutionally sensitive than the historical material examined in Tranches 1 to 3. Respondents argued that curtailing the Inquiry on the threshold of Tranche 4 would represent an act of profound institutional protectionism, shielding modern police leadership, current statutory frameworks, and active state-corporate relationships from judicial scrutiny.

Contemporaneity and RIPA 2000

Respondents emphasized the difference between Tranche 4 and earlier Tranches, as it represents the pivot from historical "legacy" policing to the modern statutory era. Police witnesses in earlier tranches sought to relegate Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) abuses to an outdated historical era. However, Tranche 4 covers the NPOIU — a unit that operated entirely under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000, the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998, and formal accredited training (the National Undercover Training Accreditation Course / NUTAC); and Tranche 5 includes undercover operations linked to criminal investigations in the same period. Because these are the same statutory and regulatory frameworks that govern undercover policing today, respondents argued that testing NPOIU and criminal operations is essential.

"Throughout the historical SDS tranches of this Inquiry, we have repeatedly heard state and police witnesses defend their actions by suggesting that past 'spycops' abuses were purely historical problems. They have continually asserted that the implementation of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 established a robust, modern regulatory framework that corrected these issues and ensured they 'would not happen now.' Because of this persistent defense, it is absolutely essential that the Inquiry completes its statutory Terms of Reference by fully examining the post-2000 NPOIU deployments… Tranche 4 represents the only opportunity to properly test whether RIPA actually protected the public, or whether it merely formalized, expanded, and hid these intrusive covert operations from democratic oversight. If the Home Office truncates the Inquiry before Tranche 4 is examined, the police's core defense — that RIPA solved the problem — will remain permanently unchallenged, leaving a massive, untested legislative framework and evasive leadership accounts unexamined as the blueprint for current undercover policing."

— Reclaim the Streets Cohort (18 September 2026)

This analysis was echoed by "Tina", a Category H Core Participant whose infiltration occurred during the NPOIU era. She submitted that shutting down Tranche 4 would preserve a state-sponsored falsehood while leaving active violations of Articles 3 and 8 of the Human Rights Act unexamined:

"Throughout this Inquiry, police witnesses have claimed that SDS abuses were 'legacy' issues cured by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000. My case and others are living proof that this is untrue. NPOIU officers operated entirely under RIPA, yet predatory intimate relationships and severe human rights breaches continued unabated, as did massive levels of unchecked collateral intrusion, open-ended fishing expedition deployments, and disproportionate and unnecessary intrusion that could not lawfully be authorised under RIPA."

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

Submissions highlighted that major evidentiary gaps remain, with answers not expected until Tranche 4. Kate Wilson detailed how the distinction between tranches has actually led to evidence being obscured:

"Large sections of the witness statements for the senior officers who gave evidence in the last round of hearings remain under 'temporary redaction', because they relate to matters to be addressed in T4. In the case of Alan Mitchell, his entire first witness statement has been withheld from disclosure until T4. Janet Williams states at paragraphs 232–236 of her Second Witness Statement that she rejects the conclusions of the IPT ruling in my case and that she is 'disappointed she was not given an opportunity to correct the evidential picture.' Yet no questions were asked of her about why she disagrees with the ruling when she gave live evidence in July, because those are matters that relate to T4. Any assessment of what went wrong with undercover policing based on the evidence heard to date will be necessarily incomplete and inaccurate. Any attempt to make recommendations for the future must first understand what went wrong in T4 and T5."

— Kate Wilson (Core Participant, 9 September 2026)

State-Corporate Collusion

Submissions revealed that Tranche 4 holds critical, unexamined evidence regarding how covert police units acted as publicly funded security for private multinational corporations (such as Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, E.ON, and EDF), passing intelligence to assist companies in obtaining injunctions against protesters and to compile employment blacklists.

"Our witness evidence demonstrates that the police effectively provided free, covert security to protect the commercial profits and intellectual property of private biotech firms. While criminalizing peaceful activists acting in the clear public interest to protect the environment, the state deployed highly intrusive undercover units to do the bidding of private corporations… Evidence disclosed in tranche 3 proved that UCOs were not passive observers… Evidence yet to be examined will show how NPOIU officer Mark Kennedy actively participated in the organizing group targeting Bayer CropScience in 2004. Kennedy personally hired and drove the minibus for office occupations and blockades against Bayer…"

— Genetic Engineering Network (GEN Cohort, 17 September 2026)

"Major corporate polluters including E.ON at Kingsnorth, BAA at Heathrow, and EDF at Kingsnorth routinely used this state-supplied covert intelligence to secure wide-ranging civil injunctions, such as BAA's surreal attempt to ban 5 million people from Heathrow, designed to bypass criminal jury trials, avoid public scrutiny, and privatise political policing."

— Camp for Climate Action Cohort (August 2026)

Furthermore, environmental network submissions exposed how covert state surveillance fed directly into corporate employment blacklisting.

"At least 200 environmental campaigners – many linked directly to the Earth First! network and related campaigns – appeared on the notorious 'greenlist' database managed by the Consulting Association. This employment blacklist was used by multinational construction and engineering corporations to deny employment to political activists. We have a profound interest in establishing how much of this highly confidential personal information was illegally fed to private firms by the police – something not yet examined by the inquiry. Additionally, NPOIU intelligence was routinely passed to private companies to support their applications for civil injunctions against protest groups."

— Earth First! Cohort (17 September 2026)

Miscarriages of Justice and Legal Professional Privilege

Respondents stressed that Tranche 4 includes some of the biggest criminal and civil miscarriages of justice, highlighting that undercover officers in the NPOIU systematically subverted the criminal justice system by acting as agents provocateurs, infiltrating defense teams, and concealing exculpatory evidence from trial judges and prosecutors.

In his submission, solicitor Mike Schwarz of Hodge Jones & Allen cited the Crown Prosecution Service's own acknowledgement of this, together with the conclusion of the 2014 Ellison Review, to demonstrate that non-statutory review bodies, including the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), are structurally incapable of uncovering these police-perpetrated miscarriages of justice on their own:

"The Crown Prosecution Service has emphasised that in light of the general lack of revelation to prosecutors set out above, there are now inevitable barriers to finding cases of concern through examining CPS files, as it is entirely dependent upon what it is told by the Police. Whilst steps have been taken to respond to cases that have been drawn to its attention, such as the Kennedy cases, the CPS does not have a mechanism by which it is able to provide a comprehensive check of cases of potential relevance because it cannot identify cases where the Police did not reveal potentially relevant undercover activity… Ellison concludes… 'The relative lack of progress of this Review over the last year, the complexity which has been encountered in making progress over any reasonable timescale, and the limitations that may exist as to either the CCRC or the CPS referring cases back to an appellate court, all suggest that it may now be appropriate for the Public Inquiry to become engaged in these issues.'"

— Mike Schwarz, Hodge Jones & Allen (18 September 2026)

This legal reality was reinforced by the Ratcliffe-on-Soar cohort, the largest single cohort of miscarriages of justice victims in the Inquiry. They submitted that after state bodies spent over a decade using the existence of the UCPI to block disclosure in appellate courts and tribunals, shutting down the Inquiry now would constitute an act of supreme bad faith:

"Our case was the catalyst leading to the creation of the Inquiry. The pre-emptive arrest of 113 people at the Iona School revealed that undercover policing operations were actively misleading the criminal justice system. The collapse of the 'Ratcliffe 6' trial and the 2011 Court of Appeal ruling quashing 20 convictions established that a grave miscarriage of justice had occurred… During criminal appeals relating to the Ratcliffe case, CCRC processes, and civil litigation, our legal representatives repeatedly sought disclosure of Kennedy's logs, surveillance recordings, and intelligence reports. Elementary disclosure rules were disregarded by both the police and the CPS. When we pursued this material across multiple legal forums, the state consistently opposed, narrowed, or stayed those actions, explicitly arguing that individual proceedings were inappropriate because the statutory Undercover Policing Inquiry was the proper vehicle for disclosure and to investigate these operations. Having spent a decade relying on the existence of the UCPI to fend off disclosure across every other court and tribunal, for the state now to shut down the Inquiry before it reaches Tranche 4 constitutes an egregious bad-faith manoeuvre that would permanently lock away suppressed evidence…"

— Ratcliffe-on-Soar Core Participant Cohort (17 September 2026)

Furthermore, individual Core Participants submitted that NPOIU officers systematically spied on confidential legal support and defense strategy meetings.

"Our community anti-war protest group was infiltrated by undercover NPOIU officer EN1, using the cover name 'Marco Jacobs'… EN1/Marco Jacobs spied on our legal support meetings, including by offering his flat in Brighton as a venue in which to hold them… I strongly oppose any proposal to limit the scope of this Inquiry. Doing so would risk allowing the truth to remain buried… It would amount, in my view, to a state cover-up of the full truth."

— Ceri Gibbons (Core Participant, 17 September 2026)

Officers from both the SDS and the NPOIU were involved in the Fairford Coaches incident, and while some questions were asked in Tranche 3, the case falls to be investigated fully in Tranche 4. For core participants linked with the judicial review of the policing of that event (R (Laporte) v Chief Constable of Gloucestershire), there are important questions about how the outcome of this legal case may have been shaped by failures to disclose the involvement of undercover officers.

"In particular, I was very upset to learn that Richardson was an undercover police officer who may have withheld evidence relevant to the judicial review. This may have altered the outcome of our legal cases. The judicial review and subsequent appeals revealed that the Gloucestershire Constabulary had made decisions based on faulty intelligence. Is it possible this poor intelligence was shaped by misleading reports from Richardson or other undercover police officers? I would like to know, or at least have the judiciary be able to examine the information themselves."

— Jesse Schust (Core Participant, 17 September 2026)

The joint letter from the Non-Police Non-State Core Participants and their Recognised Legal Representatives, filed in the first week of the consultation, also identified categories of unexamined misconduct and how those need to be addressed:

"Some of the most egregious behaviour in undercover policing is yet to emerge including, but not limited to, miscarriages of justice, undercover police officers acting as Agents Provocateur and failures around the policing of racist criminal gangs. It is vital that these issues are explored and that the NSPCPs receive disclosure; that the voices of the NPSCPs are heard in public through live / written evidence and exhibits; and that the public officials implicated are required to give evidence."

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

The significance of Tranche 5

Respondents warned that truncating or abandoning Tranche 5 (which covers non-SDS, non-NPOIU undercover policing activity by regional police forces from 1968 to the present) would leave severely traumatized victims without truth, disclosure, or public cross-examination, while entirely shielding undercover deployments by regional police forces and in criminal investigations from scrutiny.

In her submission on behalf of the Centre for Women's Justice (CWJ), solicitor Harriet Wistrich set out the devastating facts of 'Gabriella', a designated Category H Core Participant whose case sits in Tranche 5:

"'Gabriella' was deceived by an undercover police officer in a relationship lasting over 19 years. The extent of duplicity and connivance of a range of state institutions in keeping her in the dark for several years, deserves its own public inquiry… The UCO raised her daughter as his own and then planned a further child, who was conceived and is now a teenager. She only learnt of his deceit in 2020 when she was informed by Avon and Somerset Police who also told her that as a result of the UCO's tasking she and her children were and remain at an Article 2 and 3 risk… We understand significant investigative work has already taken place in relation to this tranche of the Inquiry."

— Harriet Wistrich, CEO Centre for Women's Justice (20 September 2026)

This was strongly reinforced in the joint submission by Police Spies Out of Lives (PSOOL) and Category H Core Participants, who highlighted that Gabriella's case demonstrates the human cost of any attempt to abandon Tranche 5:

"Core Participant Ruling 47 (27 April 2023) records the case of 'Gabriella,' designated to Tranche 5. An undercover officer conducted an intimate relationship with her over 'a lengthy deployment'; the Inquiry's ruling describes the consequences for her as 'literally, life changing,' and grants her anonymity on the basis that disclosure of her identity would risk her rights under Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights — the right to life, and to freedom from inhuman or degrading treatment. Her case has not yet been heard. It sits in the tranche this consultation is asking whether to abandon. She is not a hypothetical illustration of what curtailment would cost. She is a named Core Participant currently who would be directly impacted by it."

— Police Spies Out of Lives (September 2026)

In addition, Core Participant Ben Leamy explained the importance of Tranche 5 in understanding whether undercover operations by regional police forces were subject to the same failings as the Metropolitan Police units:

"I understand that some forces were operating their own covert units targeting political groups in their areas and it will be important to examine such operations to help dispel any notion that abuses were limited solely to 'rogue' units within the Metropolitan Police. T5 is due to examine the shocking case of a woman deceived into an 18-year relationship with an undercover officer supposedly working on a criminal case. It is essential that this is properly examined, not only for her, but also because it would help reveal the extent to which abuses were not limited to the so-called 'intelligence only' units, but also to undercover criminal investigations."

— Ben Leamy (Tranche 3 & 4 Core Participant, 7 September 2026)

Kate Wilson also highlighted the importance of T5 in examining whether undercover deployments in criminal investigations were subject to improved oversight:

"The reality is that despite significant differences in management and regulation, much the same went wrong in both [the SDS and the NPOIU], and in the deployments linked to criminal investigations that will be scrutinised in T5. The Inquiry needs to find out why."

— Kate Wilson (Category H / Tranche 4 Core Participant)