A Leveson-style inquiry is needed to investigate the ethics of the police, according to a lawyer who represented the family of Stephen Lawrence.
The home secretary has said claims that police tried to smear the family will be looked at by two existing inquiries.
But Michael Mansfield QC said the conduct of undercover police officers must be examined more widely.
Met Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said he would support a fresh inquiry into the Lawrence claims.
Black teenager Stephen, 18, was stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack by a gang of white youths as he waited at a bus stop in south-east London in April 1993.
A number of suspects were identified soon afterwards but it took more than 18 years to bring his killers to justice. An inquiry accused the police of institutional racism and found failings in how they had investigated the murder.
Undercover officer Peter Francis told the Guardian and Channel 4's Dispatches programme that after Stephen's killing he posed as an anti-racism campaigner in a hunt for "disinformation".
Working as part of the Metropolitan Police's Special Demonstration Squad, he said he had come under pressure to find "any intelligence that could have smeared the campaign" - including whether any of the family were political activists, involved in demonstrations or drug dealers.
The SDS was set up in 1968 and employed about 100 officers during its lifetime before being disbanded in 2008. It examined anti-war and anti-nuclear movements, groups linked to paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, animal rights campaigns and the environmental protest movement.
'So-called democracy'Mr Mansfield told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It's a squad that existed for a very long time. A squad of that size, involving those numbers, involving public expenditure of this kind does not go without authorisation from a very high level.
End Quote Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe Met Police CommissionerIf the government or Parliament decides they would prefer a public inquiry, of course we would support that"
"I think that's why the public need to have something like the Leveson Inquiry in relations to the ethics of the police in a so-called democracy.
"It can be achieved provided you have the right judge with the right focus and the right resources. This can be done quickly."
And he added: "Where was Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary throughout all these years? Why weren't questions being asked?"
A number of serious allegations have been levelled at the SDS, including:
- that officers used the identities of dead children to create their undercover personas
- that some officers had sexual relationships with female targets to increase their credibility and gain evidence. At least one relationship led to a child
- that one of the senior officers, Bob Lambert, co-authored the controversial "McLibel" leaflet, which was at the centre of the longest running civil trial in English history
- that officers infiltrated political groups protesting about police corruption in the 1990s, including the Colin Roach Centre, which was named after a 21-year-old black Briton who died in the foyer of Stoke Newington police station
On Monday, Home Secretary Theresa May said Mark Ellison QC - who successfully prosecuted Gary Dobson and David Norris for Stephen's murder in 2012 - would look into the smear allegations are part of his ongoing examination of police corruption during the original investigation into the killing.
She said they would also be looked at as part of Operation Herne, which is an investigation into undercover policing at the Met Police, being led by the chief constable of Derbyshire police, Mick Creedon.
'Layers of independence'Stephen father, Neville Lawrence, said on Monday that "nothing short of a judge-led public inquiry will suffice".
But on Tuesday, Stephen's brother Stuart Lawrence told ITV's This Morning one was not needed if 13 questions the family had put forward to the Met Police commissioner were answered.
"Those questions will help us understand who knew what, when they knew, etc," he said.
The Newham Monitoring Project, which represented victims of police misconduct and racist violence in the London borough, was one of the group's said to be indirectly targeted by undercover police.
In a statement the group said it is "appalled that campaigns we have advised and aided that were run by bereaved families struggling for justice for their loved ones after a death in police custody may have been targeted for covert surveillance" and it called for an independent inquiry".
Sir Bernard told radio station LBC there were "two or three layers of independence" in the inquiries already set up, but he understood why Mr Lawrence wanted a wider probe.
"I think a public inquiry is possible, I don't think it's for me to call that," he said.
A public inquiry could "take a long time", he said, and any discovery of wrongdoing would still have to be investigated further by the Independent Police Complaints Commission or the police themselves in order to take criminal or disciplinary action.
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But he added: "If the government or Parliament decides they would prefer a public inquiry, of course we would support that."
The commissioner said he had ordered a review of undercover operations after taking charge two years ago and was confident things were "running correctly now".
"I have to make the case for undercover officers. They are very courageous and where they are deployed properly and according to the law they go out and target serious organised crime.
"The only thing we have to be careful about is what relationships undercover officers are forming day to day."
Lord Condon - who was Met commissioner from 1993 to 2000 - has said he was not aware of any order to smear the Lawrence family and any such attempts would be "clearly wrong".
Pressure for a public inquiry has come from other sources too, including former Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick and former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord MacDonald.
Lord MacDonald told the BBC: "Chief Constable Creedon, who is running the police inquiry, said the public need to understand that the best people to investigate officers are police officers. Well, no, they are not."
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