Conduct of Undercover Policing and Surveillance Operatives Bill [HL]
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 17 Jul 2026 · 18 speeches · Official Report
Second Reading
Moved by
That the Bill be now read a second time.
My Lords, before we begin our debate, I remind the House that the advisory speaking time for Back-Bench contributions is four minutes. This is to allow all colleagues to participate fairly and the House to rise at a reasonable time, around 3 pm.
My Lords, our reaction to rape, to violence against women and girls, to coercive control and to grooming has intensified over recent years, along with greater understanding of what it means to be a target, and the protection of human rights is always topical. This includes the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment. All these are what underlie the Bill. It has been known for some time that some undercover police officers entered into intimate sexual relationships with women members of organisations they had infiltrated. It is still not known how many women were deceived into long-term relationships with “boyfriends” who had assumed false names. It seems that there were upwards of 68. In some cases, children were born. The Bill looks to the future, aiming to learn from the past. These women were activists, not terrorists. They went on protests and they were involved in planning protests. I do not suggest that the activities were insignificant, although I think some were fairly minor. Nor am I arguing that there is no place for undercover surveillance: that is not a matter for today. It would need a psychologist properly to describe the life-changing impact on the women targeted. They were in apparently close, forever relationships, only for their partners suddenly completely to disappear. That caused such anxiety, as it would. You would be distraught. They made huge, extraordinary efforts to find them. Disturbing information started to come to light: true identities,...
My Lords, I strongly support the Bill, and I do see it as a Bill dealing with state-sanctioned abuse. The Bill directly responds to the abusive nature of these sexual relationships which were built on deception. The deception that is involved negates a person’s ability to exercise autonomous choice about who they are having sex with, not merely what act they are consenting to, and can be morally equivalent to non-consent. Applied here, the woman cannot be considered to be in a position of consenting to sex with the actual person-the serving police officer or a member of our secret services-because that identity is concealed as a matter of operational necessity. That cannot be a rationale. Over the years, I have seen and met a number of women directly affected by this. There is no doubt as to the nature of the pain and the emotional and psychological harm that it has done to them: one day, suddenly, this person disappears, and it transpires that they had another wife and children elsewhere. I have met one of the women who had a child by the man, who was using her to access an environmental group. The deception perpetrated by undercover police violated her right-and the other women’s rights-to sexual autonomy and resulted in severe emotional and psychological harm to many of them. They are having to have psychological help for post-traumatic stress disorder. The women say: “Our ‘consent’ to sexual activity with those men was fraudulently obtained. They knew that we would never...
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her introductory remarks about her Bill. Unquestionably, the conduct of undercover agents of the state-be they police officers or members of the secret services-is a matter of great public interest. For women who have had relations with men who they thought were, for example, fellow protestors but turned out to be undercover police officers-and for their children-it is a matter of acute and distressing private interest as well, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Kennedy, explained so movingly. The Bill moves us into new or different legal territory. There is, as the noble Baroness said, College of Policing guidance on undercover operatives having intimate and sexual relations with those they are deployed to infiltrate and so on. However, that behaviour-as long as it is consensual-is not currently a criminal offence. We also have the Mitting inquiry, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, referred, but that is yet to produce its final report; I accept that report has been far too slow in coming. I entirely understand the motives of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in bringing the Bill to the House. However, my concern is that it criminalises, via a Private Member’s Bill, activities that, at the time of the behaviour in question, were consensual. We are debating very delicate and very difficult questions, and I do not want to be misunderstood. I certainly do not condone rape or serious sexual assaults. I...
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for alerting me to this legislation; I have been out of action from the House for nearly six weeks and I had failed to spot it. She knows broadly what I am going to say, which is that I have sympathy with what she is trying to achieve, for the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, mentioned and qualified by what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, just said. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, alerted me to the Bill because she said it had an application to the Security Service. There is no reference to the Security Service in the legislation because, I would argue, it is poorly drafted. You cannot suddenly change the terms of reference for this world. RIPA and the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 make it clear that a covert human intelligence source is a member of the public who provides intelligence in secret to the authorities. The people listed at the beginning of the Bill who are defined as CHISs are actually the authorities who run those CHISs. I am afraid that this is deeply confusing, so if this Private Member’s Bill survives it needs to be redrafted to make that clear. We are talking about undercover policing. We are, obviously, waiting for the Mitting report. I make no apology for that behaviour; it was disgraceful in every way and it has done considerable damage. If an undercover member of the Security Service had been found to behave like that when I was there then...
My Lords, I declare my relevant interests as a non-executive director of the Metropolitan Police, but at no time during my service as a police officer did I have responsibility for undercover officers and I have no professional expertise in this area. I congratulate my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on her Private Member’s Bill. I absolutely agree in principle, as other speakers have, with what she is trying to achieve: undercover officers should be prohibited from engaging in intimate sexual relationships with those who they are deployed to infiltrate and target, or encounter during their deployment, and that such activity should be unlawful and subject to criminal prosecution and sanction if it does occur. I believe that Section 78 of the Sexual Offences Act is too broad, as suggested in the Bill, as prohibition should be limited to physical intimate sexual activity; non-physical intimacy may be necessary and proportionate. Rather than the Bill as drafted, under Section 29B(10) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Secretary of State may, by order, “prohibit the authorisation … of any such conduct as may be described in the order”. I believe that the Home Secretary should prohibit the authorisation of intimate physical sexual activity between an undercover officer and those he is deployed against, or encounters in the course of such deployment. I am told that authorising officers would never, nowadays, pre-authorise such activity, but this change...
My Lords, I too add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on raising this point. It is important for two reasons: first, the terrible damage done to those who have suffered as a result of what happened; and, secondly, and to my mind importantly, the damage this does to the police force. On this issue, the law needs to be clear. We look to when the CHIS Act, if I might call it that, was before this House and the prohibition of the authorisation of certain activities. Lady Massey of Darwen’s amendment was passed in this House, and it would have prohibited sexual relations being authorised. There were reasons put forward as to why that was wrong. The other place took a different view and there was no prohibition. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, has explained, the issue of consent in sexual relations is a very unclear part of the law. It needs looking at. There have been many proposals for reform, and it seems to me wholly impossible to try to deal with the problem through an easy amendment to the Criminal Justice Act relating to sexual relations. We are therefore concerned with making it clear that under no circumstances can a person who is an undercover officer engage in sexual relations. I must say I found the College of Policing’s guidance to be deeply unfortunate. There is no reason why it tries to qualify the very clear statement that people should not engage in sexual activity. The one solution to this problem would be for the...
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing this Bill before your Lordships’ House. It is an honour to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, in this debate. I acknowledge the contributions from your Lordships who have drawn on their expertise and experience, which is far beyond my own. Before turning to the substance of the Bill, which I support, I wish to acknowledge the extraordinary service that our police officers give to this country. In doing so, I pay tribute to PC Jess Turnbull of Northumbria Police, who tragically died in the line of duty at just 19 years of age. Her funeral was held in Newcastle Cathedral last Friday. We continue to hold her family, friends and colleagues in our thoughts and prayers, giving thanks for her life and her willingness to serve others at such a young age. Her death reminds us that policing is a vocation of public service, often carried out at great personal cost. It is in that spirit that I approach the Bill. This Bill is not about preventing legitimate activities. Rather, it addresses one specific question, which, at its heart, is an ethical question before it is a legal one. The Bill concerns one of the most fundamental aspects of human life: the ability to trust another person. When an intimate relationship is deliberately entered into or maintained under a false identity for the purposes of surveillance, genuine consent is fundamentally compromised and profound harm can result. We...
My Lords, I am grateful to come late in the list, as most of the drafting problems in this Private Member’s Bill have been spoken to. I recognise that the statutory guidance says that these relationships should not happen, or only in desperate circumstances, but a breach of criminal law gives victims better redress. It would then not only be in the annual IPCO report but would be investigated by the police, with fuller disclosure to the victims. Despite 11 years of a statutory inquiry, the number of victims is not reliably known-I think it is 68 adults and four children. The added protection of criminal law is especially important for young people who, in desperate circumstances, may have entered into a relationship with a juvenile CHIS. I recognise there are very few juvenile CHISs, but victims could be young people, due to contexts outside the domestic context, such as that of youth violence, in which juvenile CHISs are deployed. I hope His Majesty’s Government will consider a role for the Children’s Commissioner and her view on this, and consider the long-term outcomes for juvenile CHISs. It seems that only current juvenile CHISs are within the remit of the IPCO’s report. Evidence on the long-term effects on a juvenile would aid the detailed risk assessments made by senior authorising officers on how to conduct or deploy a juvenile CHIS. While today the media is seized of the case of agent X and lies told on three occasions by MI5 to our courts, I am grateful that this...
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...
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to support my noble friend Lady Hamwee’s Bill and her absolute determination to close what is a clear gap in the legislation. I am not a lawyer or any sort of expert on this. I am moved to speak today because my noble friend Lady Hamwee and Justice organised a meeting where we could hear from some of the women about their experiences. In my time in this House, I do not think I have had a more upsetting experience. Moving would be the wrong word, when you started to think what they had been through. Their lives had been stolen. Not only had their time been stolen but their ability to trust had also been stolen, as my noble friend said. That is very hard-probably impossible-to ever get back. Then, of course, there is the issue of the children. People have said there are four, but there might be more. Do they have fathers? They obviously have biological fathers, but they actually have no fathers. Do they have half-siblings? All those questions lead me to think that for all the arguments that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, made-which I will not repeat, because noble Lords have heard them-this change to close this loophole in our law really needs to happen. Our national institutions allowed, encouraged or condoned these in effect premeditated crimes, which went on for years. This needs to be clearly outlawed, and I support the Bill.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing the Bill before your Lordships’ House today. I begin by declaring an interest: I was a police officer for 32 years, serving in the Metropolitan Police and the then National Crime Squad, where, as a senior investigating officer, I conducted a number of covert operations. I should start by saying that I entirely understand the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has raised. There have been scenarios where covert human intelligence sources and undercover officers have acted in a manner that is totally unacceptable. These have been acknowledged, and I fully appreciate her intent with the Bill. We need to also acknowledge that undercover policing has been a developing aspect of criminal investigations through the years and, by its very nature, is intended to push the boundaries and test the law through the courts in order to arrive at an agreed level of acceptance. Above all, it is an essential tool in the investigation of serious and organised crime. Knowing what I know and having been there on the front line, I cannot support the Bill. A blanket ban on undercover officers forming these kinds of relationships is something we should be very cautious of indeed. The simple fact is that undercover operations are incredibly dangerous-potentially the most dangerous aspect of policing, but also one of the most necessary. Some of the biggest successes in policing have come from undercover operations. To...
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for tabling this Bill. As we have seen, it has rightly generated an impassioned debate across the Chamber on the important issues it raises. I share the concerns of all noble Lords over the historic allegations about police undercover operations. Such behaviour, which we have discussed this morning, is appalling and should rightly be condemned. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is right to describe the impact of these events on their victims as life changing, and I completely appreciate the intention of the Bill. Public trust in the police is important, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle said. I join her in paying tribute to PC Jess Turnbull, who, as she said, paid the ultimate price for serving and protecting us. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, the reputation of the police is an important part of our discussions. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger-once, and technically still, my rabbi at West London Synagogue-and what she said about their acts that we see daily and the way they protect all communities, particularly, over recent weeks and months, the Jewish community. When we talk about things that harm the reputation of the police, we must do so with great care and deliberation. As noble Lords know, and as was mentioned many times in the debate, the Undercover Policing Inquiry was established to get to the truth of those events that we heard about and to...
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. An objective of a Private Member’s Bill is to get the Government to think again about the issue, not about the words used by amateurs like me. [ Laughter . ] I am not sure how to take that laugh. I hope that, in that spirit, the Government will consider the substance of what has been said today. We are still awaiting the outcome of the inquiry, but that does not mean that the issue will go away; nor does the fact that it has been referred to in historical terms mean that it should not be addressed. It should be dealt with by the Government, and I would be very happy if they produced a Bill to do so; or, as a second option, to deal with what has so neatly been referred to as “deeply unsatisfactory” guidance on the part of the College of Policing. It is clear that there is scope to improve that, as the noble and learned Lord said. For me, this has always been an ethical issue, to which the law should respond-ethical before legal. I have one other specific point. I am quite deliberately not referring to noble Lords individually, because otherwise people feel that they have been left out, and I do not want to take up the time of the House by running through everyone. Some of the wording to which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred was taken directly from the College of Policing guidance, in particular the words encountered during deployment. I have at least the Minister’s encouragement that the...
Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.