Is there still a chance to get justice for Stephen Lawrence?

In terms of the first investigation, failures are still being uncovered and new opportunities for evidence are being identified.

The suspect we named last year, Matthew White, was treated as a witness by the first investigation and was repeatedly referred to as such under an alias during Macpherson. But he was really a major suspect and the failure to identify him as one is arguably the worst of all those committed by the first investigating team.

Lord Sentamu, who was part of the Macpherson Inquiry team, has told me the murder would have been resolved in the 1990s if White had been dealt with properly and that Sir William Macpherson, who is now dead, would have felt he had failed by not having identified the White issue during his inquiry.

The fact that White’s stepfather had tried to tell the first investigation that White had admitted to being present during the murder was only uncovered in 2013 by Clive Driscoll, the officer who achieved the only two murder convictions in the case.

He uncovered all this after reviewing notes and messages from the first investigation and then going out to speak to people on the ground, which is what Stephen’s family now want from the new review.

Mr Driscoll was in the process of investigating White when he was made to retire early the next year and, from my own research, it is clear the Met did not subsequently fully pursue the lines of inquiry he was following, something the Met disputes. The Met has said it twice passed files on White to the Crown Prosecution Service. They ruled out murder charges, but my research has shown not everything possible was done prior to those files being submitted.

When investigating the case, which has meant knocking on doors all over the country, I repeatedly found that evidence from the first investigation could not be taken at face value, and that probing and testing it could generate opportunities and fresh leads.

Some witnesses have not been spoken to for many years, meaning the Met is not taking advantage of the fact that some people may now feel able to speak about what they know.

It is a maxim of police appeals that, over time, allegiances can shift and minds can change. But time is not a friend – witnesses are getting old, and some have died even during the time I’ve been investigating the case.

The Met’s focusing of the blame on what happened in 1993 and 1994, deflects from a critical examination of the various later investigations. These contained their own failures and therefore now hold their own opportunities as sources of evidence.

After the Macpherson report was published in 1999, a major investigation codenamed Operation Athena Tower took place. It was vast and costly, and employed techniques typically associated with counter-terrorism, including surveillance and bugging.

The Met have refused to acknowledge failures in Athena Tower, as it has about the investigation which preceded the closure decision in 2020. Neither resulted in any charges being brought. Indeed, the only successful Met investigation was the one run by Clive Driscoll between 2006 and 2014.

Mr Driscoll, whom I got to know well during my own research, had repaired relations between the Met and the Lawrences, which subsequently collapsed again after he left the Met. The family view him as honest and determined to get to the bottom of the case, regardless of whether that highlights failures in the Met’s other inquiries.