An undercover police officer has been accused of behaving “recklessly” when he fathered a son with a woman from whom he had concealed his real identity, a public inquiry has heard.
Bob Lambert was accused of failing to give any consideration to the wellbeing of the woman, known as Jacqui, whom he had deceived into an intimate relationship.
Lambert admitted that Jacqui and another woman he deceived into a sexual relationship would not have consented to the relationships if they had known that he was an undercover officer.
On Tuesday, he told the undercover policing inquiry that he had made his superiors aware about his impending fatherhood and the second relationship.
Lambert, a key figure in the spy cops inquiry, is being questioned formally in public about his controversial deployment infiltrating animal rights activists and anarchists for the first time since he was exposed in 2011.
During his deployment in the 1980s he had sexual relationships with four women without informing them that he was married and an undercover officer.
Jacqui told the inquiry last week that her life had been “absolutely ruined” after discovering the truth by chance, more than two decades after the birth of their son.
The inquiry is examining how about 139 undercover officers spied on more than 1,000 political groups between 1968 and at least 2010. Lambert, who is being questioned for most of this week, has been giving evidence in a halting voice, often replying that he cannot recall when asked specific questions.
In 1984, the same year he began his five-year deployment, Lambert started a relationship with Jacqui, an animal rights activist. He said he did not use a condom as he believed she was using contraception.
David Barr, the inquiry’s chief barrister, asked him: “Did you behave in this reckless manner because you were not giving Jacqui’s wellbeing any consideration?” Lambert replied: “I was certainly giving it very serious consideration. I continued to show that level of consideration during the pregnancy.”
Lambert said he talked to one of his managers, who is now dead, in a pub about the pregnancy but he took no action.
Lambert initially helped to bring up the child but then vanished from their lives after two years, claiming – falsely – that he was in danger of being arrested by the police for crimes he had committed as an animal rights activist.
Lambert was also questioned about another relationship he started in 1984. The woman, known only as CTS, was a member of a radical group, London Greenpeace, that Lambert infiltrated. She was in her early 20s and he was about a decade older. He said he became “emotionally involved” with her.
Barr asked Lambert: “Would CTS have consented to sex with you if she had known who you really were?” Lambert replied: “No, I don’t imagine that she would have done.”
Barr asked: “Did you consider that issue at all before having sex with CTS?” Lambert responded: “Not that I can recall.”
Lambert also said Jacqui would not have consented either.
One of the main issues being examined by the inquiry is how the undercover officers who infiltrated political groups frequently formed sexual relationships during their deployments, using their fake identities, and how much their managers encouraged the relationships to better enable the officers’ infiltration.
Lambert said his managers had discussed his relationship with CTS after they were photographed together by special branch at a demonstration.
Lambert said he had received unclear advice from his managers about how to manage sexual relationships while he was undercover, while being told to form close friendships with the activists he was spying on. He said the relationship with CTS was “an unintended consequence of the directions that I had to form close friendships”.
