18 Jan 2018

The Inquiry is committed to operating in as transparent a way as possible and as part of this commitment is today adding a new tab to its website, which contains a table of cover names. The purpose of the table is to enable members of the public to identify whether they may have known officers who were deployed undercover and help anyone with relevant evidence to give about the deployment of any of these officers to contact the Inquiry in confidence.

The new page “Cover Names” collates the information on cover names of former Special Demonstration Squad undercover officers where the Chairman has made a ruling, or where there has been no application for anonymity over the cover name, and the Inquiry has completed its own pre-publication checks. The table lists the officer’s cover name, the nominal given to them by Metropolitan Police Service’s Operation Herne, the main groups the officer was part of during their deployment and the approximate dates of deployment.

The web page also lists:

  • those officers whose cover names will be released once pre-publication checks have been completed;
  • those officers whose cover names cannot be published because the cover names are not known; and
  • those officers where the Chairman has granted an anonymity application, in which case we list dates of deployments if we are able to.

The web page will be updated whenever the Chairman issues a ruling on anonymity, and again when a cover name is made public. At time of publication the table contains details of 11 former Special Demonstration Squad officers whose cover names have been released. A further 25 cover names are the subject of pre-publication checks. There are nine cases where the officer’s cover name is not known, and three cases where the cover name is restricted.

Background

The purpose of the Undercover Policing Inquiry is to investigate and report on undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces in England and Wales since 1968. The Inquiry will examine the contribution undercover policing has made to tackling crime, how it was and is supervised and regulated, and its effect on individuals involved – both police officers and others who came into contact with them.

The work of the Inquiry ranges across the full scope of undercover policing work and will look at the work of the Special Demonstration Squad, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit and police forces in England and Wales. The Inquiry will also examine whether people may have been wrongly convicted in cases involving undercover police officers, and refer any such cases to a separate panel for consideration. The work of the Inquiry will fall into three modules:

  1. Module one will look at what happened in the deployment of undercover officers in the past, their conduct, and the impact of their activities on themselves and others.
  2. Module two will look at the management and oversight of undercover officers, including their selection, training, supervision and care after the end of an undercover deployment. This section will also look at the law and other rules covering undercover policing.
  3. Module three will make recommendations about how undercover policing should be conducted in future

NOTES TO EDITORS

  1. The current process for determining anonymity applications (PDF, 139KB)
  2. Further detail on applications made by the Special Demonstration Squad
  3. The Undercover Policing Inquiry is constituted under the Inquiries Act 2005 (PDF, 207KB)
  4. The Inquiry’s terms of reference were announced by the Home Secretary on 16 July 2015
  5. The Inquiry’s Frequently Asked Questions (PDF, 96KB) provide more information on the Inquiry more generally, as do published update notes.
  6. The Inquiry’s website is www.ucpi.org.uk and the Inquiry can be found on Twitter @ucpinquiry

For further information please contact the Inquiry’s press officer, Jo Coles:

Email: [email protected]

Tel: 07827 818 460