Undercover policing needs reform, say MPs
The home secretary is being called on to overhaul the surveillance laws governing police undercover operations, writes Home Affairs Correspondent Simon Israel.
It follows an inquiry by MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) into the conduct of some police spies who infiltrated political activists groups.
The officers acquired the identities of dead children, a practice the committee described as “goulish and disrespectful”.
They also went to have long term relationships with women in these groups before faking their disappearance.
Eleven women are suing the Metropolitan Police for being duped into relationships.
Some described to MPs behind closed doors how they were left devastated when years later they learnt the truth about their former lovers.
One named in the report as Alison, told the committee: “The betrayal and the humiliation that I have experienced is beyond any normal experience.
“This is not about just a lying boyfriend or a boyfriend who has cheated on you. It is not even about a boyfriend who is having another relationship with somebody else. It is about a fictional character who was created by the state and funded by taxpayers’ money.”
Read more: Policing undercover policing - how far is too far?
Another, “Charlotte” in a statement to the committee said she’d had the officer’s child during a three year relationship in the 80s and he had concealed his true identity from her and their son for many years after.
She was active in the animal rights movement when she was met Bob Lambert in around 1984.
She says he left her in 1987. In her statement to the HASC, she says with hindsight she can now see how he had orchestrated the breakdown of their relationship.
“He continued to visit our son after he moved out and we continued an intimate relationship until one day when he said he had to ‘go on the run’ to Spain, owing to him being involved in the firebombing at the Debenhams store in Harrow.
“He promised he would never abandon his son and said that as soon as it was safe I could bring our baby to Spain to see him.”
That was the last time she saw him she says.
Then last summer she saw a picture of someone called Bob Lambert in a newspaper article on undercover police officers and realised it was the same Bob, only she knew him as Bob Robinson.
She finally tracked him down to St Andrews University: “This was the first time I had heard his voice for 24 years but I recognised it. It was very emotional.
“I remember asking him ‘why me’, he also sounded emotional. He could not answer my questions, I had many. I wanted to know if the force chose me or if he did, I also wanted to know if he had chosen to abandon me and our son or if he was under orders to do so.”
The Association of Chief Police Officers, which was responsible for running the unit from 2005 – 2010, said it supported the suggestion for an overhaul of the legislation and had been calling for such a move for the past two years.