Former Met police chief admits surveillance of Stephen Lawrence’s family was institutionally racist

Paul Condon, pictured in 2008, said officers in the unit ‘were told daily as their job to lie, cheat and deceive as a way of life and what they’re asked to do’. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

A former Metropolitan police commissioner has admitted that the surveillance of the family of Stephen Lawrence by undercover officers was institutionally racist, the spycops inquiry has heard.

While Paul Condon was in command of the Metropolitan police in the 1990s, a controversial undercover unit spied on the family as they sought to persuade Scotland Yard to properly investigate Lawrence’s racist murder.