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Since the Inquiry began in 2015, hundreds of hours of witness testimony have been heard, and thousands of previously secret documents have been released.

How to make sense of it all? The organisation I work with, the Undercover Research Group, has been working on a since 2023:

The SpycopsResearch.info database is a project of the Undercover Research Group. It aims to make the material released during the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) accessible to all.

The sheer volume of material is not the only issue to be addressed. The term 鈥淧rofessional Liars鈥� was famously used by spycop-turned-whistleblower Peter Francis to describe his former undercover police colleagues during an early Inquiry hearing.

 Although the once labelled these reports as 鈥榬eliable but delicate sources鈥�, contradictory evidence presented at the Inquiry has shown that the officers themselves鈥� the spycops鈥攚ere far from reliable.

Crucially, there was no quality checking of their 鈥榠ntelligence product鈥�, despite the reports鈥� potential to adversely affect those who were spied upon, as it was distributed to official and non-official bodies, including , the , and organisations.

Peter Francis, giving evidence to the UCPI, December 2025.

Addressing the Reliability Problem

It is now at least possible to address this reliability problem by comparing the accounts of undercover police officers with an increasing number of civilian witnesses (鈥樷��) and with open-source information from both mainstream and activist or alternative publications. However, understanding and analysing this material is still formidable, given its immense scope, complexity, and volume.

Nearly 10,000 documents have been published by the Inquiry so far, a number expected to double by its conclusion. Some individual documents consist of hundreds of pages, and the reproductions of the older material often make them difficult to read. More importantly, many documents are partially censored.

In addition to documentary evidence, there are now hundreds of hours of witness testimony to consider.

These testimonies come not only from the undercover officers and their managers but also from those who were spied upon. For example, Peter Francis, the whistleblower, had ten civilian witnesses who testified about his deployment.

With 139 undercover officers, their managers, senior uniformed police witnesses, dozens of civilians, and hundreds of groups targeted, the challenge is to make sense of the multitude of stories contained within the Inquiry.

The individual stories are often the most intimate and emotional, including campaigners鈥� motivations, the spycops' in the justice system, as well as traumatic accounts of .

The Inquiry is not just about individual experiences; it also encompasses broader narratives spanning 1968 to 2011 concerning state surveillance in the 20th and 21st centuries, the British justice system, the Cold War, and the histories of the British Police, MI5, and the Home Office.

How Our Website Helps Navigate the Scandal

Our website offers essential tools for navigating this vast and interconnected web of stories. First, it provides a of the Inquiry鈥檚 initial disclosure of material. Unlike the official state website, ours allows users to search for keywords and terms and offers diverse options to filter searches by time frame, document type, or author. In addition to the Inquiry鈥檚 disclosed material, we also have a section that provides essential documents and resources not released by the Inquiry.

Articles

In addition to the raw material, the website features hundreds of articles that analyse and summarise the evidence presented at the Inquiry. These include detailed and their . Although some of these articles are substantial, we have undertaken a rigorous editing process to keep them concise and focused, which is challenging when witness statements run to hundreds of pages and hundreds of documents are linked to individual police witnesses.

Groups Targeted

We also provide brief overviews of the by spycops. These overviews are not intended as comprehensive histories but rather aim to provide readers with sufficient context on how and why campaign groups operated, and when and by whom they were monitored.

Analysis

The most varied part of the website is the section. Here, users will find pieces on how the undercover operatives carried out their work鈥攖heir 鈥樷�欌�攁s well as articles on specific themes that have emerged from the Inquiry, such as . There are also in-depth analyses of major protest events, such as the This section also examines how, when, and why the spycops unit was and provides brief background information on other involved in the scandal.

Additionally, we are developing a smaller but expanding section detailing the various involved in the scandal.

Inquiry Section

Alongside these 鈥榚vidential鈥� sections, our website also includes a part dedicated to explaining 鈥� or does not work. This section may be of interest to those who are involved in the other twenty-one public inquiries occurring today. It explains the under which the Inquiry operates, its procedures, and the tensions and that have arisen between and the , Sir John Mitting.

To emphasise, this is an ongoing project. New articles are added weekly, sometimes daily. The Inquiry has been struggling to publish disclosure coherently, causing technical issues for us.

Of course, the Inquiry will also continue to release material for another two years, as it is now unlikely to conclude until 2028, making it the longest-running statutory public inquiry.

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