Former Met chief probed over Lawrence case ‘cover-up’
LORD Stevens is to be investigated over hotly disputed allegations of a cover-up of police corruption in the bungled Stephen Lawrence murder probe.
Last night the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it will investigate claims that the former Met chief failed to hand over key information to the Macpherson Inquiry regarding the black teenager’s race hate killing.
The watchdog probe stems from a complaint from Stephen’s father Neville Lawrence. Lord Stevens was deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1998 to 2000 – while the Macpherson Inquiry report was being compiled – before serving five years as the UK’s most senior policeman.
The complaint concerns a letter to the Macpherson Inquiry in 1998, in which Lord Stevens stated that no officer or former officer involved in giving evidence was under investigation for corruption. It is alleged that the letter included misleading information. However, last night sources close to the former Scotland Yard commissioner said he was vindicated last year by Mark Ellison QC, the author of an official report into the Lawrence corruption allegations.
A source said: ‘Any suggestion that anyone from the Met would seek to withhold the truth from the Macpherson Inquiry at that time is completely untrue. Last year Mark Ellison wrote to Lord Stevens to say he had done nothing wrong.’
Last night, Channel 4 News – which revealed details of the IPCC probe into Lord Stevens – quoted him as saying: ‘ Step very carefully, I’m not putting up with any more c**p about this.’ Quoting from a letter he received from Mr Ellison, Lord Stevens was reported to have said: ‘No one is suggesting that you did anything that was culpable in any way.’
The IPCC said: ‘We can confirm we are independently investigating Lord Stevens following a referral from the Metropolitan Police.’
The Met said that after it received ‘ a public complaint in relation to Lord Stevens’ it made a referral to the IPCC last November. The Met’s statement added: ‘The complaint has been made in relation to Lord Stevens’s role as the then deputy commissioner and disclosure to the Macpherson Inquiry.
‘This issue was raised in the Stephen Lawrence Independent Review by Mark Ellison QC, where he concluded there were defects in the level of information that the Metropolitan Police revealed to the inquiry.’
Mr Lawrence had asked the IPCC to look into alleged failures of senior officers, including Lord Stevens, to provide ‘full, frank and truthful’ information to the inquiry as well as claims that hundreds of files on past major police corruption probes were shredded. He welcomed the IPCC’s decision to investigate, telling Channel 4 News: ‘ I’m hoping that this time they’re going to come back with a result that can help us to get further into the truth of what was happening during the investigation into Stephen’s death.’
It took more than 18 years to bring two of Stephen’s killers – Gary Dobson and David Norris – to justice and they were jailed for life in 2012. Also that year, Home Secretary Theresa May commissioned Mr Ellison QC to lead an independent review into whether there was evidence of corruption in the original Lawrence investigation, and whether evidence had been withheld from the Macpherson Inquiry.
Last year she told Parliament that there were ‘serious concerns that… relevant material which would show corruption has not been revealed because it cannot be found or has been destroyed’.
When the Ellison review reported last year it said one former detective, John Davidson, was suspected of corruption in the Lawrence case, in which he had a key role. Mr Davidson has always denied the claims.
‘Step very carefully’