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Conduct of Undercover Policing and Surveillance Operatives Bill [HL]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing the Bill forward, and I support it. I am speaking today to express my shock and outrage that after all the publicity this issue has had, there is still no absolute bar on sexual relationships between undercover police operatives infiltrating organisations and women within those organisations.

The noble Baroness, Lady May, set up a public inquiry into all this 11 years ago under the chairmanship of Sir John Mitting, and we have been hearing about that from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. That inquiry has already cost more than £135 million and, as we have heard, is not yet complete. Yet it is important to recognise that its interim report for tranche 1, published back in June 2023, made it clear, in the case of the special demonstration squad, that the ends did not justify the means and that

“had the use of these means been publicly known at the time, the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end”.

Meanwhile, the CPS decided not to prosecute any of the police officers who were known to have had intimate sexual relationships while operating undercover. It was that decision particularly that has led to campaigners calling for a change in the law. The Bill provides for such a change. It also provides women with some reassurance that they will not be treated in this way by police or any other undercover operative, and I note what my noble friend Lady Manningham-Buller has said.

The Bill should go some way to restoring trust in the police. We need to be able to trust the police; I wholly agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. I am a rabbi, and as somebody who has witnessed some incredibly impressive and brave policing by the Met in recent months and years, protecting the Jewish community, I am exceptionally grateful to them. But my more general confidence would be even greater if the Government would support the Bill, or at least the principles within it, give clarity and reassurance to those who fear that such behaviours could still happen, and make it clear that should that happen, the penalties would be huge.

Sir John Mitting said that if the public had known such things occurred within the SDS, it would have been brought to a rapid end. I hope the Minister will give the Bill his support and bring even the slightest possibility of such undercover intimate relationships, particularly by the police, abusive by their very nature, to a rapid end.

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