Sadiq Khan has said he was left “speechless” after more files linked to the murder of Private Investigator Daniel Morgan were discovered in a locked cabinet at New Scotland Yard despite “full disclosure” assurances from former commissioner Dame Cressida Dick.
The Mayor of London was quizzed about the discovery by Alastair Morgan, who is still seeking justice for his brother Daniel who was killed with an axe in a pub car park in 1987 in a still unsolved murder.
A string of unsuccessful investigations into his death have been mired with claims of corruption.
An independent panel set up to look into the case published a scathing report in June last year in which it accused the Met of "a form of institutional corruption" for concealing or denying failings over the unsolved murder.
“I’m very rarely speechless in my job for reasons you’ll appreciate. I was speechless when I was told there was a filing cabinet that was locked and when it was opened up these documents were found,” the mayor told Speak to Sadiq on LBC on Thursday morning.
“This will be properly looked into, just to reassure you. My understanding is, the reason for the delay is that those documents were gone through to see if they’ve already been disclosed to the panel.
“And only in discovering some of them hadn’t been disclosed to the panel was it brought up to me and the others.
“My understanding is all those documents have now been sent to the panel and the police have again... apologised to you and your family.
“But it’s not good enough, because I was reassured by the former commissioner there’d been full disclosure.”
Khan added that former Met commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, had not accepted the findings of the panel into Mr Morgan’s murder.
Alastair Morgan has campaigned for decades for justice for his brother Daniel, who was killed in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London on March 10, 1987.
Alistair said on Twitter: “My grief for my brother, I can see, has been encased for decades within an armour-plated shell of pure rage.
“This rage I needed, time and time and time again to stand up, again and again and again to the psychological torture inflicted upon us by the British police, the decades of indifference and inertia from the home office and the sheer ugliness of the Murdoch press and its filthy actions.
“But we have prevailed. We are all, except for dear Dan, still standing to bear witness to this history.
“And of course, our dear mother. may she rest in peace. Who died in 2017, after 30 years of campaigning, still tortured by all this, and never having seen the final report. There is much, much to be forgiven.”
Met Assistant Commissioner Barbara Gray said the discovery of paperwork in a unit that had not been used for a number of years was “unacceptable and deeply regrettable”.
Some of this material should have been disclosed to Baroness Nuala O’Loan’s Daniel Morgan Independent Panel which published its final report in June 2021.
A Met spokesperson said: “A careful assessment has been completed to understand the significance of the newly found documents and any potential impact.
“A total of 95 pages of material (37 documents) have been initially identified that would have been disclosed under a protocol agreed with the Panel.”
The Independent Office for Police Conduct, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Home Office have been informed.
The Met spokesperson added: “Our assessment is that there are no evidential documents that relate to criminal investigations into the murder.
“The Met has written to the family of Daniel Morgan and Baroness Nuala O’Loan to explain what we believe has taken place and outline next steps.”
A spokesperson for the police inspectorate HMICFRS said: “The Met has informed us of the documents it has recently discovered, which are relevant to our previous inspection. We have agreed to review these documents and will report our assessment of them in due course.”
