Labour MPs have demanded to see secret files that were gathered on them by undercover police in the 1990s even after they had been elected to parliament.

The calls were made in a Commons debate prompted by claims in the Guardian by Peter Francis, a former undercover police officer, that he read secret files on 10 MPs during his 11 years working for the Metropolitan police’s special branch.

Francis said that Scotland Yard held files on MPs Harriet Harman, Peter Hain, Jack Straw, Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn, and the late Bernie Grant, as well as Ken Livingstone, the late Tony Benn, Joan Ruddock and Dennis Skinner.

The deputy Labour leader, Harriet Harman, asked the minister of state for justice, Mike Penning, to assure her that the government would allow her to see a full copy of the information gathered on her.

Police continued spying on Labour activists after their election as MPs Read more

She said of her work in the 1990s: “I was campaigning for the rights of women, the rights of workers and the right to demonstrate. None of that was against the law, none of that was undermining our democracy. On the contrary, it was essential for our democracy.”

“The security services do an important job and the government of course should support them, but if they overstep the mark the government must hold them to account,” she said.

Labour’s Jack Straw, who is standing down as MP on Thursday, repeated a call for the files to be released and said that the allegations relate to the period when he was home secretary between 1997 and 2001.

“I not only knew nothing whatever about what appears to have been going on within the Metropolitan police, but may also have been subject to unlawful surveillance myself as home secretary,” he said.

Penning, who responded to the questions from MPs in the absence of the home secretary, Theresa May, said that the recently established Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing would look at Francis’s allegations and promised that he would work to share whatever documents he could with MPs, but warned that some information might have to be redacted.

During the debate, attended by all the serving MPs named by Francis in the Guardian report, Peter Hain said that the surveillance could have compromised confidentiality between the MPs and constituents.

“It is one thing to have a police file on an MP suspected of crime, child abuse or even cooperating with terrorism, but quite another to maintain one deriving from campaigns promoting values of social justice, human rights and equal opportunities which are shared by millions of British people,” he said.

“Surely, Mr Speaker, that means travelling down the road that endangers the liberty of us all.”

Repeating calls to see a copy of her file, Diane Abbott said it was a “breach of the privacy and the confidence of the very many people I worked with down the years on the campaigning I did in the 1990s”.

Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North, said: “If I’m under surveillance, or the late Bernie Grant or any of my friends are under surveillance – [then] whatever meetings we were at, they were presumably there; whatever phone calls we made, they were presumably recording.

“I think we have a right to know about that. We represent constituents. We are in a position of trust with our constituents. That trust is betrayed by this evasion of our privacy.”

May ordered the public inquiry after a string of revelations about the conduct of undercover officers who infiltrated political groups for more than 40 years. Some officers were found to have formed sexual relationships with women they had been sent to spy on. The remit of the inquiry, which is to be led by Lord Justice Pitchford, has yet to be defined.

The MP for Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, questioned why all those who had been spied upon seemed to be “leftwingers”. “Is this one of the reasons why all those paedophiles managed to disappear into thin air and is it a reason why Jimmy Savile never had his collar felt?” he asked.

Nick Clegg said that if Francis’s claims were true then they were “absolutely terrible”, adding that politicians should be able to represent their constituents without being monitored by the police.

Speaking on his final weekly radio phone-in show on LBC, the deputy prime minister said: “The idea of police snooping and monitoring elected politicians, in effect because of their views - that’s the implication of this is that because they were gleaned to be from the left that they were somehow dodgy - absolutely appals me.”

“I know Theresa May has launched a wider inquiry into undercover police tactics, the Pitchford inquiry, and I very much hope they’ll look at these allegations because they are not the kind of thing you want in a free society.”