So, an independent inquiry set up to review the murder of the private detective Daniel Morgan has found that the Metropolitan police were “institutionally corrupt” and that the Met commissioner held up the inquiry’s work (Daniel Morgan murder report: six critical findings in focus, 15 June). Our home secretary has let it be known that she has full confidence in the Met commissioner. Who was it who said that a corrupt government needs a corrupt police force?
J Gwynfryn Jones
Windermere, Cumbria
• The Daniel Morgan inquiry’s lack of legal powers to compel evidence was key to allowing the Met to withhold access to the Holmes database. Andy Burnham’s proposal for a duty of candour on public bodies is surely necessary when such obstructive conduct is pursued by the current Met commissioner. And it should also apply to police and crime commissioners, including mayors like him and Sadiq Khan, when they stand by their police chiefs so unquestioningly.
Mary Pimm and Nik Wood
London
• It is less “extraordinary … that the Met appears to have been the biggest obstacle its authors faced” (The Guardian view on Daniel Morgan’s murder: calling out the Met, 15 June) if the possible role of freemasonary is considered. DS Sid Fillery was a master freemason, and 10 police officers who were prominent in investigations into Mr Morgan’s murder were freemasons. It is also hardly extraordinary that the investigation was unable to find evidence of corrupt practice by masons in the Met if they were (and are) a secret (and influential) organisation within it.
Bill Bradbury
Bolton, Greater Manchester
• Are the Morgan inquiry findings really a surprise? Go back to 2009, when London’s police and crime commissioner was informed of the Met’s failings in the criminal investigation and treatment of the family. Perhaps the mayor of London at the time could shed some light and inform us what action he took.
Tom Challenor
London
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