Undercover police infiltrating left-wing political campaigns and protest groups routinely passed their reports to MI5 according to new evidence heard in the ongoing ‘spycops’ inquiry.

Police sent on years-long deployments deceived members of political campaigns, family justice organisations, pro-democracy groups and anti-nuclear armament campaigns, even duping women into sexual relationships. The inquiry into their conduct as part of the ‘Special Demonstrations Squad’ (SDS) has now found that MI5 still holds the surveillance reports that were passed to them by these officers.

Stella Rimington, who was the head of MI5 in the 1990s, said their targeting of left-wing groups during the height of Cold War paranoia was ‘over-enthusiastic’.

The inquiry heard that MI5 gathered, and still holds, details about and photographs of the children fathered by undercover cops with campaigners, bank account information, and home addresses. The relationship between the SDS and security services is one of the strands now being examined as part of this inquiry.

Private Eye also revealed this week of a link between the Special Demonstration Squad and the anti-union Economic League, responsible for the blacklisting of thousands of construction workers on account of their union activity. Whistleblower and former Met Officer, Peter Francis, told the hearing of a meeting between an SDS officer and a ‘very senior’ member of the construction industry, who he revealed to be Lord McAlpine, who had just ceased to be Margaret Thatcher’s treasury secretary and the Conservative Party deputy-chairman.

In the last evidence session the inquiry heard from Mark Jenner, an undercover officer who deceived women into sexual relationships while posing as a fellow campaigner. Explaining his actions, he said ‘you could do pretty much what you wanted apart from kill anybody was one of the things that was quoted to me’. He admitted his actions were ‘cunning’ and ‘cruel’, saying ‘I was offered sex and I took it’.