Undercover Policing

Baroness Clark of Kilwinning Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the importance not only of training for individual officers, but of the need to ensure that senior officers properly manage any deployment of undercover operatives. That is indeed one of the issues that, as I mentioned earlier, was raised in the HMIC report last year. HMIC will, of course, look at the implementation of its recommendations, and will be reporting this Thursday. Having set up the College of Policing, we now have a body that is responsible for ensuring that for police operations across the board, appropriate training is given and to the right and correct standards.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

Another of the allegations that have been made is that an undercover police officer was one of the co-authors of the leaflet that led to what became known as the McLibel court case, and that another undercover police officer had a two-year relationship with one of the defendants in that case. Will the Home Secretary ensure that this is also thoroughly investigated?

[Mrs May]

I can assure the hon. Lady that the remit of Operation Herne in relation to the SDS goes very wide. It is not focused just on a limited number of cases; it looks at the whole operation of the SDS, including the reporting lines, as I indicated to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), and a number of other matters. It has a wide-ranging remit.