Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister to this House. To declare an interest, I am what is described as a “non-police, non-state core participant” in the Undercover Policing Inquiry, and I am due to give evidence early next year. I was targeted by undercover officers for some 30 years, including when I was an MP. But what troubles me most are the clear abuses practised by undercover officers involving people I know well.

Ecological activist Kate Wilson is not a criminal. She is a principled radical activist. She was at primary school in London with my two sons. Our families shared holidays and often visited each other’s homes. She was targeted by undercover officer Mark Kennedy, who formed an intimate and what she described afterwards as abusive relationship with her over seven years. He even reported back to his superiors on contacts with my family when I was a Cabinet Minister. Why were police targeting Kate instead of drug barons, human traffickers, criminals and terrorists?

Doreen Lawrence, now my noble friend Lady Lawrence, was a law-abiding citizen when her family’s campaign to discover the truth about her son Stephen’s brutal racist murder was infiltrated by undercover officers. Why were they not targeting the racist criminals responsible for Stephen’s murder?

Undercover officers attended anti-apartheid meetings in my parents’ living room from 1969 through the early 1970s and reported back that I was a speaker at anti-racist meetings when I was an MP in the early 1990s. Why were they not targeting those responsible for, among other things, crimes in London of fire bombing and murder by the oppressive actions of the apartheid state? Why did they show no interest whatsoever in discovering who in South Africa’s Bureau of State Security was responsible for sending me a letter bomb in June 1972 capable of blowing my family and our south-west London home to smithereens were it not for a technical fault in the trigger mechanism?

In each of these cases, the police were on the wrong side of justice, on the wrong side of the law and on the wrong side of history: infiltrating the family of a climate change activist instead of helping combat climate change; covering up for a racist murder instead of catching the murderers; harassing anti-apartheid activists campaigning for Nelson Mandela’s freedom instead of pursuing crimes by the apartheid state.

Fortunately, Kate Wilson’s early eco-activism helped make climate change an international treaty. We stopped the 1970 all-white South African cricket tour; we helped bring down apartheid; and Nelson Mandela went on to be elected President. The Anti-Nazi League, of which I was a founding national officer, succeeded in destroying the fascist, racist National Front. But why were undercover police officers trying to disrupt us, diverting precious police resources away from catching real criminals?

However, perhaps I differ from other core participants in the inquiry because I do believe there can be a need for undercover officers. When I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 2005 to 2007, I met undercover officers doing brave work trying to prevent dissident IRA splinter groups from killing and bombing. I also signed surveillance warrants to prevent Islamist terrorists bombing London and was aware of vital undercover work around their cells.

But where to draw the line—if indeed, it is possible to do so? How do you stop that sort of legitimate undercover police or intelligence work sliding over into the illegitimate? Counterterrorism police recently putting non-violent Extinction Rebellion on their list of terrorist groups hardly inspires confidence. Why does this Bill not even begin to answer any of these key questions?