A former undercover police officer has criticised the Metropolitan police commissioner for apologising to the women who were deceived into sexual relationships by undercover officers.
The criticism was made at a public inquiry on Friday by Trevor Morris, who deceived two women into sexual relations while he infiltrated leftwing and anti-racism campaign groups.
He said the apology issued last month by Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, was “outrageous”, and he defended his own deception of the two women.
It is the first time the long-running inquiry has heard a strong defence of the undercover officers who regularly formed intimate relationships with women, without disclosing their real identities to them.
The inquiry, led by the retired judge Sir John Mitting, has been examining how around 139 undercover officers had spied on more than 1,000 political groups since 1968. The inquiry began in 2015 following a series of revelations about the misconduct of the undercover officers.
In July, at the start of the current round of hearings, Peter Skelton, the barrister for the Metropolitan police, issued the unreserved apology on behalf of Rowley. He said the relationships were “abusive, deceitful, manipulative, and wrong”. The Met admitted that the managers of the undercover officers had failed to prevent the relationships, which had resulted from a wider culture of sexism and misogyny.
Asked on Friday if he agreed with the apology, Morris said it was easy for the commissioner, who did not know what it was like to work undercover, to make such an apology. “It is relatively unacceptable that the commissioner says that as though it means nothing to him … Did he ever do that job? No, he didn’t. Did he know what it was like not seeing your family growing up? No, he didn’t. It’s outrageous.”
Morris said many of the undercover officers had experienced mental ill-health because of the stress of their covert work.
This week, the inquiry has been scrutinising the undercover deployment of Morris between 1991 and 1995. During that time, he had a relationship with a woman, known as Bea, for more than a year, and a sexual encounter with a second woman, known as Jenny.
On Monday, Bea and Jenny said Morris’s behaviour was “degrading and morally bankrupt”.
Morris testified that he had the sexual relations with them under his fake identity. “I regret them because it would be better for everyone if they had not happened. But at the time they happened I was, for all intents and purposes, my alter ego … so I lived this ultra-deep cover.”
During sharp exchanges, Morris was asked twice by David Barr, the inquiry’s KC, if what he did was completely wrong. He replied: “I am not accepting that it was completely wrong.”
He also said: “When you are in that role and in that task, and in that circumstance, and you have got nothing that is protecting you in any shape or means, then it’s a completely different kettle of fish.”
Barr said Bea had testified she would not have consented to the relationship if she had known he was an undercover officer. Morris replied: “I don’t know that … People can say things in the cold light of day, but is the reality that?”
Asked again by Barr if he was asserting that she would have consented, he answered: “I am not asserting anything. I just don’t know.”
On Monday, Jenny said: “I think sex without consent is rape … I did not consent to sleep with Trevor Morris.”
During his deployment, Morris used the identity of a dead boy as part of his cover and spied on campaigners who sought to put pressure on the police to investigate properly the murder of Stephen Lawrence by a racist gang.
The inquiry is due to resume hearing evidence in late September.
