Police have opened an investigation following allegations that an undercover officer who had infiltrated animal rights campaigners set fire to a high street department store, causing £340,000 of damage.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Metropolitan police announced that it was investigating the planting of an incendiary device in Debenhams in Harrow, London, in July 1987.



The launch of the investigation comes after Green MP Caroline Lucas aired allegations in parliament that Bob Lambert, a Met undercover officer who pretended to be a radical protester for five years, had planted the device.

Lucas highlighted allegations that Lambert had been part of a plot with two animal rights activists to set fire to three branches of Debenhams to protest against the sale of fur.

Lucas told parliament in 2012 that Geoff Sheppard, an activist who was jailed for four years over the arson attacks, had alleged that Lambert had planted the device perhaps in “a move designed to to bolster Lambert’s credibility and reinforce the impression of a genuine and dedicated activist.” Another activist, Andrew Clarke, was jailed for three years.



Lambert has denied planting the incendiary device. He previously told the Guardian: “It was necessary to create the false impression that I was a committed animal rights extremist to gain intelligence so as to disrupt serious criminal conspiracies. However, I did not commit serious crime such as planting an incendiary device at the [Debenhams] Harrow store.”

Lambert has said that the aim of his covert work had been to “identify and prosecute members of the Animal Liberation Front who were then engaged in widespread incendiary and explosive device campaigns against vivisectors, the meat and fur trades.” He said he succeeded in getting Clarke and Sheppard arrested and imprisoned.

The launch of the Met’s investigation is the latest development in a controversy that has enveloped the undercover infiltration of hundreds of political groups.

A series of disclosures in the last five years persuaded home secretary Theresa May to commission a judge-led public inquiry into undercover policing since 1968. The inquiry, led by Lord Pitchford, has been holding preliminary hearings.

In its announcement, the Met said the new investigation would seek to exploit potential advances in DNA techniques and fresh information that had come to light during an internal police inquiry into the undercover operations.



The Met added that they are not identifying anyone who is the subject of the investigation, which is being led by a senior officer in its professional standards directorate.



While Lambert was undercover in the 1980s, he fathered a child with an activist and then abandoned them when his covert mission ended. He said he had to disappear abroad to escape being arrested by the police. In reality he returned to work at Scotland Yard.



The woman, known only as Jacqui, only discovered by chance in 2012 that he had been a police spy after he had been exposed the previous year.



She has been profoundly traumatised and has been paid more than £400,000 by the Met. Lambert, who is now retired, had three relationships with women while he was undercover.



In the 1990s, he was promoted to a key position within the undercover unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, and managed other spies. Like other SDS officers, Lambert had stolen the identity of a dead boy to use as his fake persona.



Clarke and Sheppard are appealing against their convictions, alleging that Lambert’s role was hidden from their original trial.

A series of convictions of political campaigners are due to be examined, as part of Pitchford’s public inquiry, to see if they should be overturned because the involvement of undercover officers had been concealed from their prosecutions.