by Bethany Rielly

A LAWYER representing more than 100 spycops has defended the practice of stealing dead children’s identities, claiming it was “essential” for protecting undercover officers. 

Speaking at the undercover policing inquiry today Oliver Sanders QC also dismissed cases in which officers engaged in “casual” sexual relationships with activists as “consensual.”

The inquiry is examining the tactics used by the Metropolitan Police’s special demonstration squad (SDS) and national public-order intelligence unit (NPOIU) whose officers together spied on over 1,000 political groups dating back to 1968. 

One policy under examination is the use of deceased children’s identities, without the knowledge of their families, to build credible legends for undercover officers.

Spycops did this by visiting the public births records office at St Catherine’s House in London, and choosing a child who was born around the same date as their own birth. 

Explaining why the policy was adopted, Mr Sanders said that the existence of a publicly accessible register for every birth meant that it was “the only way to create a challenge-proof identity.”

The decision was taken, he said, after a number of officers’ identities were compromised when their targets went searching for their birth certificates. 

Officers were also perceived to be at increased risk during this time due to the Troubles in the north of Ireland and IRA attacks, he added. 

Mr Sanders claimed that the policy, which was official practice in the SDS between 1973 and the mid-1990s, was “essential in protecting undercover officers of the SDS and other organisations from compromise and other possible harm.” 

The lawyer added that the policy is a “good example” of why the inquiry should not judge officers by “contemporary standards.” 

The practice dated back to a time when people “held different views about … the use of information about someone who had died and about the greater public benefit of doing that in order to protect someone who was alive,” he claimed. 

Earlier this week the Metropolitan Police admitted that “insufficient consideration was given to the impact that it might have on the families of the children concerned.”

The inquiry has informed 20 families that aspects of a relative’s identity were used by undercover officers. They included 19 deceased children and one living child. 

It comes after the Metropolitan Police repeatedly refused to tell parents that the identities of their children were used in this way. 

Mr Sanders also claimed that sexual relationships with activists were instigated by a “minority” of officers.

He said that of the 74 SDS officers he represents, two had long-term intimate relationships, four had “casual” sexual relationships and 68 “did no such thing.”

The “casual” encounters, he said, were “the kind that happens between consenting men and women in social settings and in all walks of life.”

At least 30 women are known to have been deceived into relationships by officers of the SDS and NOPIU and have described the deception as “state-sanctioned rape.” 

One of them is“Lisa” who was deceived into a six-year relationship with undercover officer Mark Kennedy between 2003 and 2010. 

Lisa, who keeps her real identity anonymous, described Mr Sanders’ claim that the short relationships were consensual as “absolutely outrageous.”

“How can you consent to a sexual relationship when there is this level of deceit?” she told the Morning Star.

“Even when things are shorter it still applies. The fact that I had a relationship with Mark Kennedy for six years, had it only been for six hours the same consent issue would still have been there.”

Activists targeted by spycops are urging the inquiry to find “institutional sexism” in the police.