Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government which (1) political, and (2) campaigning, organisations have been (a) monitored, and (b) infiltrated, by police, or at the direction of police, since 1991.

Part 2 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act provides the police with the power to authorise surveillance and covert human intelligence sources where it is necessary for one of the statutory purposes (i.e. the prevention and detection of crime) and proportionate to what is sought to be achieved. The police are operationally independent of government and the exercise of those powers is therefore a matter for the individual forces concerned.

In 2015 the Home Office established the Undercover Policing Inquiry, to inquire into and report on undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces in England and Wales since 1968. The Inquiry’s investigations remain ongoing and it will publish a report of its conclusions in due course.