The Undercover Policing Inquiry released an Interim Report on 30 June 2023. This report looked at the Tranche 1 evidential hearings, and the Inquiry Chair provided his thoughts on a number of aspects of the evidence as well as a number of findings.
The release was partly to acknowledge the considerable delays the Inquiry had experienced in getting to this point, but also to set the stage for what needed to be looked at in the forthcoming tranches.
It was notable for Sir John Mitting’s finding that:
The question is whether or not the end justified the means […]. I have come to the firm conclusion that, for a unit of a police force, it did not; and that had the use of these means been publicly known at the time, the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end.