Scottish government asks Theresa May to have inquiry examine covert police activity in Scotland as well as England and Wales

The Scottish government is pressing for a public inquiry into the undercover infiltration of political campaign groups to be broadened to examine covert operations in Scotland.



The home secretary, Theresa May, commissioned the judge-led inquiry but limited its remit to scrutinising operations in England and Wales.

Police have admitted that an undercover unit that monitored political activists in England and Wales collaborated with Scottish police forces. Mark Kennedy, the undercover officer who infiltrated environmental groups for seven years, visited Scotland 14 times during the operation.

Michael Matheson, the Scottish justice secretary, has written to May calling for the extension. It comes as the inquiry – led by a senior judge, Lord Justice Pitchford – has started preparing to hold public hearings looking at how undercover police officers have infiltrated hundreds of political groups since 1968.

The home secretary set up the inquiry following a series of revelations about how undercover officers formed long-term relationships with campaigners they had been sent to surveil, and gathered information about the parents of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in 1993.

Sarah Hampton, 40, an activist who had a year-long relationship with Kennedy, described how the two of them spent several weeks together in Scotland in the summer of 2005. They were involved in organising a large-scale protest at a G8 summit.

They had met a few months earlier but she said she fell in love with him during those weeks, which she called a “very concentrated time”. She said: “He was an amazing activist. He was a full-time activist. He was paid to be an activist. None of us were paid to be activists. He was very efficient.

“He had a fund to spend on us which came from the state. I had never met someone who was so generous with his money before.”

Kennedy helped to coordinate the logistics for a kind of eco-village where the activists stayed during the protests, used to highlight how people could live sustainably.

But at the same time, Kennedy was feeding back to his superiors information about how the campaigners planned to demonstrate against the G8 summit, where leaders were making decisions about poverty and climate change.

After Kennedy was exposed, he claimed his reports about the G8 protests in Scotland were sent to the desk of the then prime minister, Tony Blair. Kennedy worked for a covert squad known as the National Public Order Intelligence Unit that was set up in 1999 to monitor protesters. Police have admitted that the unit covered England and Wales but “also worked with forces in Scotland”.

Hampton welcomed the Scottish government’s move, which came about following pressure from herself and other campaigners who were spied on by the undercover police.

She said she hoped Pitchford’s inquiry would unearth the facts not only about the covert operations in Scotland but also in a range of other countries where British undercover officers are known to have operated.

She is one of a number of women who have launched legal action against the police after discovering they had intimate relationships with undercover officers.

In a letter to Hampton , an official wrote: “The Scottish government believes that the inquiry should be able to consider the activity carried out in Scotland by the undercover officers attached to the Metropolitan police units you mention.” The official added that Matheson had written to May on 10 December asking her to “confirm that the inquiry will consider that activity”.

In July, when May announced the remit of the inquiry, she said it would look into “undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces in England and Wales since 1968”.

A Scottish government spokesman said: “The cabinet secretary for justice has written to the home secretary asking her to confirm that the Pitchford inquiry will consider any activity in Scotland conducted by English and Welsh forces.”

The Home Office confirmed that it had received the letter and would reply in due course.