MP demands parents be informed in fake ID row

By CLARE BAILLIE
Published on 05/02/2013 00:50

PARENTS of dead children whose identities were used by undercover police must be informed, Keith Vaz MP said yesterday.

• Parents of dead children not informed

• Police officers were issued with driving licences and national insurance numbers

• Documents were used to infiltrate protest groups

• Measure used between 1968 and 1994 - report

Scotland Yard’s Special Demonstration Squad used the details over three decades in order to make fake personas more credible, according to newspaper reports.

The Metropolitan Police authorised the practice for covert officers infiltrating protest groups, but did not inform the children’s parents.

Yesterday, chairman of the home affairs select committee (HASC) Keith Vaz said: “What is absolutely vital is that the parents of those involved should be informed immediately. It can’t be right that this information is being kept from them.”

One officer, who adopted the fake persona of Pete Black while undercover in anti-racist groups, said he felt he was “stomping on the grave” of the four-year-old boy whose identity he used.

“A part of me was thinking about how I would feel if someone was taking the names and details of my dead son for something like this,” he said.

Another officer, who used the identity of a child car crash victim, said he was conscious the parents would “still be grief-stricken” but argued his actions could be justified because they were for the “greater good”.

Both officers worked for the Special Demonstration Squad, disbanded in 2008.