A Statement by the family of Daniel Morgan
7 December 2021
Almost six months following the publication of the report of the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel in June 2021, the family have made the following statement:
“We, the family of Daniel Morgan, welcomed the report of the Independent Panel when
it was published earlier this year. In particular, we welcomed the recognition that we –
and the public at large – had been failed over the decades by a culture of corruption and
cover up at the highest ranks of the Metropolitan Police: an institutionalised corruption
that had permeated successive regimes.
“Over 34 years after Daniel’s murder, we found in the Panel’s 1250-page report an
accurate reflection of our lived experience: the complicity and worse of the British state
in all its guises in the police corruption and criminality that has blighted our lives. We
recognised in the report a blueprint, an invaluable guide, as to what can happen when we
allow such corruption and criminality to go unchecked within the police and similar
agencies of the state.
“We had hoped that those responsible for holding the Metropolitan Police to account –
the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), the Mayor’s Office for Police and
Crime (MOPAC) and the Home Secretary – might yet find the integrity and the will
required to confront and acknowledge the culture of corruption and cover up in the
Metropolitan Police as identified by the Panel. We hoped that they would stop turning a
blind eye to those within the Metropolitan Police who – at best – deliberately turned away
from the stench of police corruption; those who sought to manage the fallout from that
corruption instead of confronting it.
“And we hoped against hope that, despite their treatment of us throughout these years,
the Metropolitan Police would take the opportunity provided by the Panel’s report to do
the right thing at last: to finally confront that culture of corruption within their ranks which
has served to ensure that those responsible for Daniel’s murder remain protected from justice to this day.
“In the event, we have been saddened – if not surprised – to find we have been let down
yet again by all concerned. The present Commissioner, Cressida Dick, felt able to simply
reject the Panel’s key finding of institutional corruption within the Metropolitan Police,
Her role in obstructing the Panel’s work – as detailed in their report – appears to have met
with indifference and worse at the IOPC and MOPAC where those charged with bringing
her to answer for her role in this sorry state of affairs have shown themselves unable or
unwilling to do so. And, in their wisdom, the Home Secretary and the London Mayor
deemed it fit to extend her term in office before the ink had dried on the Panel’s report.
“As we have said before, no family should have to go through what we have had to suffer
over these decades. No family should have to find as we did that our confidence was
betrayed by those to whom we should be able to turn for help. No family should be cut
adrift in the way we were left to fend for ourselves in the face of the most serious
criminality that can be imagined. No family should have to bear the immense and
indescribable cost we have paid in terms of our health, emotional, physical and otherwise.
Above all, no family should be left to find, as we do, that we are no longer able to place
our trust in the police, the state or any other form of authority in this country.
“Three generations of our family have already suffered as the collateral damage resulting
from the inexcusable failure of the institutions of the state to do what was required of
them in the face of institutionalised police corruption. We do not want this burden to be
passed on to the coming generations of our family. We want to be able to get on with our
lives at long last, but that requires some form of acknowledgement on the part of those
who have failed us.
“In all the circumstances, we consider we have been left with no option but to bring a
civil claim against the Metropolitan Police in order to achieve some semblance of
accountability. To that end, our solicitors have sent a letter of claim to the Metropolitan
Police Directorate of Legal Services, and we await their response with interest.
Please direct any enquiries to Raju Bhatt by e-mail (r.bhatt@bhattmurphy.co.uk