Following the major criticisms of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) made by Mark Ellison KC in the Stephen Lawrence Independent Review, the Home Office commissioned Stephen Taylor to ‘to establish the full extent of the Home Office’s knowledge of the Special Demonstration Squad’.
Taylor had been a former Director at the Audit Commission. His report was published on 12 March 2015. It was hampered by the fact that the main Home Office file relating to the SDS, given the number QPE 661/8/5, was missing. A search of Home Office archives had failed to find a single document pertaining to the SDS. Fortunately, the Met and other agencies had retained copies of documents they'd prepared for the Home Office.
Taylor also interviewed a number of former Home Office senior civil servants.
His report largely absolved the Home Office of significant knowledge of the activities, saying its knowledge was essentially one of ‘headline points’ given to it by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. Otherwise, Taylor concluded, from 1969 to 1989, the Home Office was aware of the unit and the sorts of groups it was targeting but its activity was one of providing continued funding for the SDS in that era.
He concluded that the Department was specifically aware of:
a number of the groups which were targeted, monitored and infiltrated each year from 1969 to 1989;
the type of intelligence gathered from the covert operations, including some specific cases where arrests followed as a result;
the detailed operational activity and all groups infiltrated in 1983 and 1986.
There is no documented evidence of any Home Office knowledge of:
detailed operational methods or activities other than the retrospective headlines produced by Special Branch.
He said he found no knowledge of issues within the Home Office such as theft of dead children’s identities or the targeting of the Stephen Lawrence justice campaign, but the missing documents meant it could not be ruled out.