GREAT

to see the Home Office has put former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe in charge of investigating how 400,000 DNA, fingerprints and arrest records accident al l y di s appeared f r om police databases. He previously probed the scandalous ‘mass shredding’ of police intelligence files about bent cops, which only came to light in 2014 following a barrister- led inquiry into whether corruption had contaminated the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation.

It occurred well before Hogan-Howe was appointed c o mmissioner, but t wo months into his probe he told unimpressed MPs that he still hadn’t read a summary report of the intelligence destroyed, nor asked his two predecessors, Lords Stevens and Blair, why it happened.

Hogan-Howe did preside over t h e Met when it destroyed documents after t he public i nquiry i nto undercover policing was announced. Just the man to get to the bottom of the missing 400,000 records…