Witnesses demand fair treatment as Inquiry accused of unreasonable deadlines

~ Cristina Sykes ~

Over a hundred witnesses and groups involved in the Undercover Policing Inquiry have signed an open letter in which they declare their refusal to hand in any evidence, given the Inquiry’s unreasonable deadlines for doing so. While its next hearings have been postponed by seven months, those who were spied upon have not been given any more time to prepare their submissions.

“We have collectively decided not to submit our evidence until the Inquiry engages substantively and meaningfully” with concerns, write the signatories, victims and survivors of abuses by the Metropolitan Police’s political undercover unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), between 1993 and 2008, and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) and its successors between 1999 and 2014. The case has recently gained more exposure in an acclaimed ITV documentary.

The letter demands full disclosure and reasonable timetables for all those designated ‘Non-state core participants’ in the inquiry, i.e. victims and survivors of spycops operations.

“Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, following lobbying by Core Participants, explicitly and publicly stated last September that it was vital that the Inquiry was conducted fairly“, says the letter. “As we prepare for the longest set of hearings so far the Inquiry should be doing its utmost to ensure we can provide the best evidence possible.

“More than two decades of undercover operations remain to be investigated. As we come to deal with more recent events, it becomes harder for the police to dismiss such abuses as ‘historic’, and the Inquiry’s investigations will have increasing relevance for current policing practice.

“However, many documents are missing from these later tranches, some may be lost but others are known to have been intentionally destroyed by the police. Our evidence is therefore crucial for a comprehensive investigation. We need time to seek our own sources and corroborate or contrast the information in the police files”.

Witness evidence for the next round of hearings

“Our lawyers have been denied funding to work on statements in advance, so it was with some shock that we received the news that our witness statements have to be completed in just six weeks”, continues the letter. “We told the Inquiry it was an impossible task, and deeply unfair when you consider that the police have had years to prepare”.

Just seven days after the Inquiry publicly announced it was postponing the next round of hearings from April to October 2025, witnesses were informed that the deadline for returning their evidence would remain unchanged. “It seems the seven-month extension was intended solely for the convenience of the Inquiry legal team”, says the letter. “After waiting for many years to contribute to this Inquiry, our evidence is being sabotaged by inadequate disclosure and insufficient time. If this continues, the Inquiry’s investigation of much of the spying will be based only on the partial and partisan evidence provided by the police, while we are denied any real right to challenge their evidence”.

“We refuse to allow this unfairness to happen again and are taking a collective stand to protect the most vulnerable among us. We will not submit our evidence until the Inquiry engages substantively and meaningfully with these concerns”, the letter concludes.