Senior managers running a covert unit permitted undercover police officers to deceive women into sexual relations, the spycops public inquiry has heard.
Peter Francis, a former undercover officer who has become a whistleblower, said the sexual relations were a routine feature of the covert operations for years. He said they were “an ordinary part of the undercover role … it was regarded by officers and management alike as part of the work”.
He added that two managers who supervised the covert unit advised him to use condoms while having sex with activists during his undercover deployment.
His evidence undercuts statements by senior police officers who have denied, or have been reluctant to admit, that undercover officers who infiltrated political movements formed sexual relationships with women without telling them their real identities.
Francis is the only undercover officer deployed to infiltrate political groups who has blown the whistle on the secret operations. Over many years, he has exposed wrongdoing in disclosures to the Guardian.
His revelation that his unit had put under surveillance the family of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence and their campaign for justice led to the establishment of the spycops inquiry.
Francis is giving evidence this week at the inquiry, which is examining the conduct of more than 139 undercover officers who spied on tens of thousands of activists between 1968 and 2010.
Peter Francis says his managers ‘certainly’ did not forbid him from starting sexual relationships with campaigners. Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian
He joined the covert Met police unit, the special demonstration unit (SDS), in 1993 and infiltrated anti-racism and leftwing campaigners for four years. At the start of his deployment, the SDS had been operating for 25 years.
Francis told the inquiry: “By the time of my deployment, my contemporaries and I were aware that sex as part of the undercover role was a practice that had been in place since the early days of the SDS.”
He added that both of the managers running the unit “certainly” did not forbid him from starting sexual relationships with campaigners.
While he was working for the unit, “most” of the SDS undercover spies had sexual relations with activists using their fake identity, he told the inquiry.
Francis said he had two one-night stands with two different activists while pretending to be a campaigner. He said he did not want to name them, adding that they knew who he was, given that he had a public profile as a whistleblower. He said he had been told that they wished to maintain their privacy.
He also said that during his deployment, he had a number of one-night stands with other women “outside of my infiltration of my target groups”, describing them as “non-political people I just met socially”. He was married at the time.
At least 25 undercover officers who infiltrated political groups are known to have formed sexual relationships with members of the public using their fake personas between the mid-1970s and 2010. Some of the relationships lasted up to six years.
Four of them fathered, or are alleged to have fathered, children with women they met while spying on campaigners. At least 50 women are so far known to have been deceived by the undercover officers.
A manager in the unit during part of Francis’s deployment was Bob Lambert, one of the most controversial figures in the covert operations.
In the 1980s, Lambert spent four years undercover spying on animal rights and environmental campaigners. During that time, he had a son with an activist, without disclosing his real identity to her, and then abandoned them while his son was an infant. The activist, known only as Jacqui, only found out the truth more than two decades later by chance, and has been left devastated by the discovery.
Francis said: “Lambert … said specifically to make sure I always used my own condom.” He added that there was a rumour within the SDS that a previous undercover officer had had a child with an activist who had provided a condom with holes pricked in it. Lambert did not tell him at the time that he had had a child with an activist.