BRITAIN’S largest weapons company offered the Met Police money to spy on peace campaigners after the 1996 Seeds of Hope Ploughshares action, the undercover policing inquiry heard.

Peace activists targeted by spying said today that the force’s decision to decline BAE Systems’s “money to finance” spying pushed the firm to take matters into their own hands.

The bribe offer came after four women were acquitted of criminal damage after causing £1.4 million of damage to a BAE jet in 1996 in order to prevent a greater crime, as it would have been used in war crimes in East Timor.

Former detective chief inspector Michael Dell said “BAE had offered the branch money to finance so resources could be put into this,” referring to the “attack” the arms company had “suffered.”

Questioned by the spycops inquiry on July 1, Mr Dell managed the SDS between 2001 and 2005, and worked on its predecessor C-Squad before that.

“Even though the branch could well have done with the money, they made the offer to the commissioner, obviously, and it had to be declined,” he said.

But the Campaign Against Arms Trade (Caat), itself targeted by spying efforts in the late 1990s and early 2000s, said it appears this refusal led BAE to “take matters into their own hands.”

They said the arms company embedded corporate spy Martin Hogbin in Caat from 1997 until 2003.

The group’s Emily Apple said the firm “went to extraordinary lengths to spy on anti-arms trade campaigners, and intrude in our lives.”

“This is a private company essentially prepared to bribe the police for information about its critics,” she said.

Despite the claim that the SDS refused BAE’s cash, it still went on spying on Caat, with the deployment of the undercover officer known as “Jason Bishop.”

Ms Apple said: “There are serious questions that the inquiry needs to investigate about the complicity between successive governments, the police, and arms companies to repress our right to protest.

“The power of the arms trade to influence both government and policing policy is in evidence today. 

“This is shown clearly in the proscription of Palestine Action, with documents detailing meetings Elbit Systems had, not just with the Home Office but with the Attorney General’s office, about how to crack down on protesters.”