[7] In 2012 Theresa May had commissioned Mark Ellison KC to review allegations of corruption relating to the initial police investigation of the 1993 murder of Lawrence.

Ellison also highlighted a possible link between an allegedly corrupt police officer involved in the Lawrence campaign, and the 1987 murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan.

[11] It is looking at allegations that undercover officers infiltrated and disrupted social justice groups and movements, deceived women into intimate relationships, stole the names of dead children to create fake identities, and concealed evidence in court cases.

[7] As of April 2018 the inquiry has confirmed that undercover police had infiltrated the following groups and movements: Anarchist groups, Animal Liberation Front, Anti-Apartheid Movement, Anti-Fascist Action, Big Flame, Black Power movement, Brixton Hunt Saboteurs, Anglia Ruskin Churchill Society (Young Conservatives), Colin Roach Centre, Dambusters Mobilising Committee, Dissent!, Earth First!, Essex Hunt Saboteurs, Friends of Freedom Press Ltd, Globalise Resistance, Independent Labour Party, Independent Working Class Association, International Marxist Group, International Socialists, Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front, London Animal Action, London Animal Rights Coalition, London Boots Action Group, London Greenpeace, Militant, No Platform, Antifa, Operation Omega, Reclaim the Streets, Red Action, Republican Forum, Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation, Socialist Party (England and Wales), Socialist Workers Party, South London Animal Movement (SLAM), Tri-Continental, Troops Out Movement, Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, West London Hunt Saboteurs, Workers Revolutionary Party, Young Haganah, Young Liberals, Youth against Racism in Europe.

Tranche 1, Phase Hearings of the inquiry took place in November 2020 and took evidence about the SDS between 1968-1972 from non-state witnesses and undercover police officers.