Metropolitan Police apology over Daniel Morgan murder

Daniel Morgan's family said they had been "lied to, fobbed off, bullied and degraded" by Met officers

Scotland Yard has apologised to the family of a private detective killed in south-east London in 1987, for a corrupt investigation into his death.

Daniel Morgan, 37, was found with an axe in his head in Sydenham but nobody has ever been convicted of murder.

Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin told a Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) meeting "failings" by officers. The entire legal case collapsed this month.

Mr Morgan's family has called for a full judicial inquiry.

The father-of-two from Monmouthshire was found with an axe in his skull in a car park outside the Golden Lion pub.

Five people were arrested in 2008 but none was ever convicted.

The cost of the five police inquiries and subsequent legal hearings was estimated at about £30m.

'Repeated failure'

"I am deeply sorry that the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has failed to bring to justice those responsible for the murder of Daniel," Mr Godwin has said in a letter to Mr Morgan's family.

"The MPS has accepted that police corruption in the original investigation was a significant factor in this failure."

The family was "entitled to an apology" for officers' "repeated failure" to acknowledge this corruption, he added.

"I am also very sorry that for many years your concerns regarding the failure of the MPS to bring those persons to justice were not properly addressed."

He acknowledged the family felt a "deep sense of loss, frustration, anger and distress".

Mr Morgan's relatives said in a statement that a judicial inquiry was "urgently required" as the initial police inquiry was "crippled" by corruption.

"Through two decades and more of public protests, meetings with police officers at the highest ranks, lobbying of politicians and pleas to the media, we have found ourselves lied to, fobbed off, bullied, degraded and let down time and time again.

"What we have been required to endure has been nothing short of torture."

Smiley Culture protest

Meanwhile the meeting descended into chaos when friends and relatives of a reggae singer who recently died during a police raid made a noisy interruption.

On 15 January singer Smiley Culture died of a single stab wound at his Surrey home.

An inquest has heard the wound was self-inflicted.

Asher Seator, his best friend, wept as he called for an inquiry.

He said: "No one is doing anything. What are you investigating?"

MPA member Cindy Butts was reduced to tears. She said: "It has been 30 years since the Brixton riots and so much has changed - [but] we have so much to do."