THE next stage of the public inquiry into the shocking actions of undercover officers who infiltrated hundreds of left-wing groups resumed today.

Opening statements were made on the activities of the now-disbanded Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) between 1983 and 1992.

Testimonies will be heard over the next weeks from those targeted including activists from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), London Greenpeace, Freedom Press, and the Socialist Workers Party.

CND general secretary Kate Hudson said: “Infiltration, monitoring of and spying on an organisation like CND should not happen in a democratic society. 

“The Spycops unit should never have been established, should never have continued in its activities and those involved at the highest levels should be held to account.”

In-person evidence hearings will be begin next Monday, and will take place across two stages, with the next beginning in late September.

Last July, the inquiry published an interim report criticising SDS, whose operations spanned from 1968 to 2014.

They said officers unlawfully trespassed into people’s homes, formed deceitful close, often sexual, relationships, stole deceased children’s identities, and took positions of influence and power within the organisations they targeted.

One officer, Bob Lambert, fathered a child while undercover and was accused of planting a firebomb with an animal rights group that targeted branches of Debenhams in the 1980s.

The Metropolitan Police has spent £62 million on defending its operations in the inquiry, which is now in its ninth year.

The Home Office is insisting that a final report be published by the end of 2026. 

Kate Wilson, an activist who was deceived into a relationship with an undercover officer said: “The inquiry is imposing impossible deadlines on everyone, despite missing its own deadlines for disclosure.

“It is compromising our ability to engage. 

“Many core participants have waited years for answers only to find robust investigation and fairness may be sacrificed to a new imperative of finishing quickly at all costs.”

Ms Wilson urged the “incoming home secretary next week to take immediate action to ensure the integrity of this inquiry.” 

“The Home Office are themselves under investigation here and it is entirely unacceptable for them to sabotage things in this way,” she said.