Scotland Yard detectives have a saying about their less talented bosses: ‘He couldn’t investigate his way out of a paper bag.’ The phrase perfectly sums up former Met commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe’s internal review into the ‘mass shredding’ of police corruption files.
After an embarrassing grilling from MPs in 2014, the country’s most senior police officer promised to get to the bottom of findings by a barrister-led inquiry that four bin bags relating to police corruption in the bungled investigation into the 1993 murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence had been shredded. Years passed and the Met never mentioned what had happened to the review. Until now.