When will someone be held to account for the shooting of an innocent man on the Tube?

Today marks 20 years since Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man, was shot dead by officers of the Metropolitan Police on a Tube train at Stockwell Station. He was 27. He had committed no crime. He posed no threat. He was, quite simply, in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid with his life.

First, I offer my deepest condolences to his family, whose pain time has not dulled. I also remember the 52 people murdered on 7/7, and the many injured, whose suffering helped shape the febrile climate in which de Menezes was wrongly targeted.

But memory is not enough. In Britain, remembrance too often becomes a substitute for responsibility. Two decades on, not a single person has been held to account for de Menezes' brutal killing. Not one. The British state closes ranks. The Met protects its own. And those who preside over scandal are not sanctioned. Instead, they are promoted, honoured, and pensioned off at the public's expense.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission found that the late Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner during that dark day in 2005, was responsible for "much of the avoidable difficulty" in the investigation by delaying its launch. This was not mere ineptitude, it was obstruction. To add insult to injury, he later sought a £25,000 performance bonus during criminal proceedings over the shooting of de Menezes, while on a salary of £228,000 and with rank-and-file officers facing the prospect of pay cuts.

Cressida Dick, who was Gold Commander in the control room overseeing the catastrophic operation that led to the death of de Menezes, was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner two months later. In 2010, she was awarded the Queen's Police Medal.

Over the next two decades, she climbed the greasy pole while justice lay crushed beneath it. It was she who oversaw Operation Midland, the grotesque witch-hunt built on the lies of Carl Beech - lies which branded me a child-murdering paedophile and others as child abusers.

When Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald declared Beech's allegations "credible and true" on television before even interviewing any of the alleged perpetrators, she "winced" but did nothing. Her inaction allowed the world to believe distinguished public servants including Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan and Sir Edward Heath and I were guilty of the most heinous crimes imaginable.

Dick presided over scandal after scandal: the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer, the brutal policing of her vigil, and the grotesque failure to remove serial rapist David Carrick from the force. Eventually, public confidence collapsed, and Dick resigned in February 2022. Even the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London had had enough. Yet, she had the audacity to demand £500,000 severance pay, only to walk away with a golden goodbye worth £165,000.

Tell me: had she been a constable rather than Commissioner, would she have left so handsomely? Or would she have faced gross misconduct charges, as so many junior officers do? In 2022, following her resignation, a review found that Dick may have breached professional standards relating to the murder of Daniel Morgan, a private detective who was killed with an axe in a London car park in 1987.

The Met was placed in special measures in June 2022.

In my case, Operation Midland destroyed my reputation and almost my life. Bernard Hogan-Howe, now Baron Hogan-Howe, was Commissioner throughout Operation Midland. Sir Richard Henriques' report found more than 40 major errors. I met with Hogan-Howe and he offered an apology and asked me to submit my claim and promised it would be settled. Instead, he retired and Cressida Dick dragged it out, perhaps hoping that I would give up or die.

Eventually, on the steps of the court, I was awarded £900,000 in compensation.

Moreover, Steve Rodhouse who was the Gold Commander of Operation Midland and is now Director General of Operations at the National Crime Agency, will face no scrutiny despite declaring he was not "knowingly misled" by Carl Beech when there is clear evidence to the contrary, and the IOPC upholding my complaint.

As for the IPCC, now rebranded as the IOPC, it remains what it always was: a lapdog masquerading as a watchdog. As Lady Brittan put it: the complaints system is "unbelievably opaque". It is also insidiously effective - not at rooting out wrongdoing, but at exhausting complainants into silence.

And yet, I believe change is possible. I propose three steps:

First, an independent and protected whistleblower system. Officers like Brian Paddick, who as Deputy Assistant Commissioner sought to speak truth to power after Stockwell. After clashing with Blair, Paddick was accused, but cleared, of leaking information about the shooting to a BBC journalist. Yet he was reprimanded and moved sideways.

Then there is Lana Vandenberghe who leaked official documents, which helped expose the truth behind the shooting of de Menezes. She was arrested, held in police cells for a day and questioned.

No charges were ever brought against her. However, she lost her job at the IPCC. Whistleblowers should not be punished, they should be heard and protected.

Second, a Royal Commission on policing: its purpose, its powers, its people. We must confront the question that Britain has evaded for too long: What is the role of the police in a liberal democracy?

Third, a stripping of honours. Those who presided over injustice should not be decorated with peerages and medals. How can we trust Sir Mark Rowley to be a reforming commissioner when his predecessors have been rewarded for their failures with a peerage and a damehood? Until that happens, any claim the Met is reforming is risible.

The public sees this clearly. They know that power protects its own. That high failure is not punished, but gilded. That justice, when inconvenient to authority, is simply shelved. Today, we remember Jean Charles de Menezes. But let us also remember those who failed him and who have never, even now, been made to answer for it.

That is not justice. That is betrayal.

• Harvey Proctor is a former Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay