by Sunny Hundal

In May 2009, not long after the G20 protests where newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson had died, Met police commander Bob Broadhurst told MPs:

We had no plain-clothes officers deployed within the crowd. It would have been dangerous for them to put plain clothes officers in a crowd like that. The only officers we deploy for intelligence purposes at public order are forward intelligence team officers who are wearing full police uniforms with a yellow jacket with blue shoulders. There were no plain clothes officers deployed at all.

Yesterday evening the Met quietly admitted he had lied.

In wake of the controversy around police spying of eco activists, Labour MP Keith Vaz wrote to the Met’s Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson.

Last night the Met issued this statement:

Having made thorough checks on the back of recent media reporting we have now established that covert officers were deployed during the G20 protests. Therefore the information that was given by Commander Bob Broadhurst to the Home Affairs Select Committee saying that ‘We had no plain-clothes officers deployed within the crowd’ was not accurate… The officers were covertly deployed by the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) to G20 protests to identify individuals who may be involved in the organisation of criminal activity and to give live time intelligence/evidence as to the protesters’ activity.

Unbelievable. And you can bet no one at the Met will be reprimanded for this ‘inaccuracy’.

They keep denying however that “agents provocateurs” were operational at the event. Why should anyone believe that?

Bob Broadhurst has now been asked to come back before the Home Affairs Select Committee on January 25 to explain himself.