Home affairs Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 837

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 5 February 2013

Members present:

Keith Vaz (Chair)

Mr James Clappison

Michael Ellis

Lorraine Fullbrook

Bridget Phillipson

Mark Reckless

Chris Ruane

Mr David Winnick

________________

Examination of Witness

Witness: Mark Kennedy, former undercover police officer, gave evidence.

Q192Chair: Mr Kennedy, thank you very much for coming. I have to start with an apology. I am sorry to have kept you waiting so long.

Mark Kennedy: It is quite all right.

Chair: I am afraid the other witnesses and the Committee were obviously very interested in this whole subject, as you can imagine.

Mark Kennedy: I understand.

Chair: We are most grateful. I know you were reluctant to come in because of your legal proceedings, but I can assure you this is in private. We will send you a transcript. If there are any issues you want taken out because it interferes with your legal proceedings, please feel free to do so.

Mark Kennedy: Certainly, sir.

Q193Chair: This is relatively informal, but colleagues will ask you questions. A lot of what we have seen obviously is in the public domain, but I want to start by asking you: when you went into these situations, were you allowed to have sexual relations with these women? Was it expected of you, or is it something that just happens to agents?

Mark Kennedy: No, it was not expected.

Q194Chair: At the start when you go along and they say, "You are now an undercover agent." and they send you into these situations, do they give you any ground rules? Do they tell you you have to ask permission? You did say to the Mail on Sunday on 15 January, "My superiors knew where I was at all times. My BlackBerry was fitted with a tracking device and they sanctioned every move I made. I didn’t sneeze without them knowing about it. I feel I’ve been hung out to dry". It is the Mail on Sunday, so I thought I would put that to you. Is that what you said?

Mark Kennedy: That is what I said, yes. My whereabouts was known throughout my deployment.

Q195Chair: So if you were engaging in sexual activity, would you have told your inspector, your superintendent? Would somebody have known about this?

Mark Kennedy: I did not, no, not personally.

Q196Chair: You did not engage in sexual activity, or you did not tell them?

Mark Kennedy: I didn’t tell them, sir.

Q197Chair: So how did they find out?

Mark Kennedy: I don’t know if they did find out or not, but the circumstances of these operations are such that my whereabouts was known all the time, and I was not the only person deployed in such circumstances. Such operations call upon the deployment of other undercover officers. There are also many informants within the environment that I was working in, and those informants would not have known who Mark Stone was outside of the fact that he was a member of the activist community and probably a member of the activist community that would provide quite a nice pay cheque in relation to who he was talking to and what he was involved in. So where Mark Stone lived, who his girlfriend might have been, what car he drove, was all intelligence that I am sure was coming into various different police departments around the UK.

Q198Chair: You said they found out, you did not tell them. However-I am sorry to keep quoting the Mail on Sunday; I do not want you to think this is the only thing I read-but it said on 24 November, "I worked undercover for eight years. My superiors knew who I was sleeping with but chose to turn a blind eye because I was getting such valuable information. They did nothing to prevent me falling in love". Obviously you would not expect a detective inspector to say to you, "Don’t fall in love," but what you are telling us is that you told them that you were sleeping with people?

Mark Kennedy: I did not, no.

Q199Chair: Why did you say this, then: "They knew I was sleeping with-"

Mark Kennedy: I think there maybe some literary flowering-up there by the article. The circumstances were such that it would have been difficult to believe that they did not know that I was sleeping with somebody, albeit I did not tell them.

Q200Chair: You come from the undercover agent fraternity, so you have presumably met other undercover agents.

Mark Kennedy: I have, yes.

Q201Chair: Is there a college of undercover agents, or do you just get chosen?

Mark Kennedy: One applies for the position.

Q202Chair: Of undercover agent?

Mark Kennedy: Of an undercover officer, yes.

Q203Chair: Do you know whether other undercover agents who are part of this place of undercover agents would have been involved in similar activities? We have heard evidence today from eight women, some orally, some in writing, and other claimants have come. If you look at the Guardian articles-I know you have issues with The Guardian-of the nine women uncovered by The Guardian, eight had had sexual relations with an undercover police officer. That is quite large; it is almost 90%. It seems to be standard for the job.

Mark Kennedy: And your question?

Q204Chair: Is it standard for the job? Is it the expectation? We heard from the Commissioner some time ago who said, "It is inevitable it is going to happen. You go into a situation where you are living with people, and there comes a time when you will end up sleeping with them". He did not say he encouraged it, but he said it was inevitable.

Mark Kennedy: It is not expected, and it is something that you are advised and asked not to take a part in.

Chair: You are asked not to take part in?

Mark Kennedy: Yes, sir.

Q205Chair: How are you asked, verbally or in guidance or in writing? Do they tell you that?

Mark Kennedy: When you attend the undercover course or various undercover courses that now take place around the UK, part of the training is to say that you are not to engage in sexual activities.

Q206Chair: Now?

Mark Kennedy: That certainly was when I attended my course in 2001.

Q207Chair: But you went on and did it?

Mark Kennedy: Circumstances were such that, yes, I did.

Q208Chair: Finally from me, we obviously heard from your former partner who is, as you know from the public utterances, traumatised.

Mark Kennedy: I understand.

Chair: Do you feel any guilt or responsibility? You also were married with children, and you also had another relationship, another girlfriend, who also has left you now, I understand.

Mark Kennedy: I think that is incorrect, sir.

Q209Chair: You had a wife and children?

Mark Kennedy: Yes, sir.

Q210Chair: But you are divorced from your wife?

Mark Kennedy: Yes1.

Q211Chair: As a result of this coming out, or generally it was the end of the road?

Mark Kennedy: Generally the circumstances of such deployments are very stressful on relationships.

Q212Chair: Did she know that you were an undercover agent?

Mark Kennedy: My wife?

Chair: Yes.

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q213Chair: She knew. But it was still stressful for her?

Mark Kennedy: Of course, yes.

Q214Mr Winnick: Would it be right to say, Mr Mark Kennedy, that since you, as I understand it, were told by your superiors not to engage in such activities, this was a sexual opportunity for you?

Mark Kennedy: I am sorry, sir?

Mr Winnick: To put it bluntly, you saw a sexual opportunity while you were carrying out your activities as an undercover agent.

Mark Kennedy: No, sir.

Q215Mr Winnick: Would you say that was not the position?

Mark Kennedy: That is not the position, no.

Q216Mr Winnick: When did your superiors know of such activities?

Mark Kennedy: I don’t know that they did. I am saying that the circumstances-

Chair: I am sorry, Mr Kennedy, you just have to speak up. The acoustics are terrible in this room. I am sorry.

Mark Kennedy: I said I do not know that they did. The circumstances of the operation were such that it is unlikely that they did not. I don’t know for sure if they did or not.

Q217Mr Winnick: Could you have carried out your activities for which you volunteered-am I right you volunteered to do this job; you were not more or less conscripted?

Mark Kennedy: No, sir.

Q218Mr Winnick: Could you have done and undertaken the activities the police expected of you without what could only be described as the sexual exploitation of a woman?

Mark Kennedy: In the circumstances, sir, I think it would have been very difficult in the environment in which I was infiltrating. The promiscuity and non-monogamy was an extremely intense situation.

Q219Mr Winnick: Did you have a stereotype that this was a left-ish group and the women were more or less bound to be rather promiscuous because of their political views? Did you have that opinion before you infiltrated the group?

Mark Kennedy: No.

Chair: Not all of us might share this opinion. Sorry, could you answer the question?

Mark Kennedy: I said I did not have an expectation, no.

Mr Winnick: You did not?

Mark Kennedy: No.

Q220Mr Winnick: Arising to some extent from what has been said elsewhere and what the Chair has said, what are your feelings about the woman that you deceived who feels, to say the least, very distraught, feels she has been exploited and feels that she has been used in what can only be described as a "dirty" way? Do you have any feelings, any conscience, about it all?

Mark Kennedy: I loved her.

Q221Mr Winnick: To what extent?

Mark Kennedy: I loved her more than anybody I have ever loved.

Mr Winnick: Sorry, I did not hear that.

Mark Kennedy: I loved her more than anybody I have ever loved.

Q222Chair: So, why did you leave her?

Mark Kennedy: With respect, sir, I thought this inquiry was regarding the processes and the elements of the undercover operation in which I was working.

Q223Chair: It is, but did you leave her because you were ordered to leave her?

Mark Kennedy: No, sir.

Q224Chair: You left her of your own accord?

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q225Chair: That is what we want to establish. Not the personal-

Mark Kennedy: I left of my own accord.

Chair: You left of your own accord.

Mr Winnick: But if you loved her, as you were just saying, why did you leave her?

Chair: No, I just asked that question, David.

Q226Mr Clappison: Can I ask another question arising from who knew what about this? I have two lines of questioning at the moment. One of the points that we have heard from the women is that these relationships lasted for a long time, and, besides what has been said already about them, they were personal relationships and people who got to know one another’s families and so on. How long did this relationship last for?

Mark Kennedy: Five years; four-and-a-half years.

Q227Mr Clappison: You were sharing a flat or a house?

Mark Kennedy: No.

Q228Mr Clappison: But you were seeing a lot of each other?

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q229Mr Clappison: It must have been a reasonable inference for your superiors to draw that there was also an intimate relationship as well.

Mark Kennedy: I would agree, yes.

Q230Mr Clappison: The thing that strikes me is the question of proportionality of this, which I think it may come back to in the end when this is looked at again. You have referred to the information that you were getting. Are you able to tell us anything about that? Was it, for example, to do with violent activities?

Mark Kennedy: The circumstances in this particular operation and certainly a lot of the operations that were similar to the operation that I was involved in-looking at different groups of people that were involved in various degrees of protest across the UK, and certainly for myself across Europe and extending into the US as well, a number of people-

You begin in a way where you become interested in a political scene, you get engaged with protests, you get invited in. As my operation, or the operation that I was a part of, went on, my involvement with people who were of more and more interest to various police agencies in the UK and across Europe was heightened. I was being introduced to people who had ideas of trying to disrupt power stations, who had ideas of trying to disrupt the rail network and were quite successful in doing that in France. I was involved with the anti-fascist group who would target people involved in the right wing and would cause quite serious criminal damage, quite serious violent offences. So, there were certainly a lot of people that I was introduced to and was involved with and I was gathering intelligence on who had quite clear designs regarding some serious crimes.

Q231Mr Clappison: Environmental protests can be serious in their own way when they break the law, but do you think what was happening in your undercover work was proportionate to the information and the threat that they presented to the public of the scale of their criminal activity?

Mark Kennedy: In respect of the intelligence I was gathering regarding those people that were intent upon causing mass disruption throughout Europe affecting the UK, I do, but these people are not doing these things all of the time and in order to maintain credibility and to have a legend, your association with people in general has to be maintained.

Q232Michael Ellis: You were an undercover officer from 2001. Is that right?

Mark Kennedy: I was a test purchase officer from about 1998.

Q233Michael Ellis: For drugs?

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q234Michael Ellis: So, you would go and ask someone for drugs, and they would give them to you and then they would be prosecuted for supplying?

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q235Michael Ellis: You also investigated cases like those attempting to disrupt the railway network and, as you say, power stations and the like?

Mark Kennedy: Correct.

Q236Michael Ellis: Did you have sexual relations with other individuals during the time of your undercover work over that 10-year period?

Mark Kennedy: No.

Q237Michael Ellis: So, it was just one occasion or, should I say, with one individual?

Mark Kennedy: Two individuals.

Q238Michael Ellis: Two individuals during the same operation?

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q239Michael Ellis: You clearly were consenting to that yourself. This was not something you were directed to do.

Mark Kennedy: Correct.

Q240Michael Ellis: You feel the other party fully gave her consent?

Mark Kennedy: Correct.

Q241Michael Ellis: You accept there was deception in the relationship in that she did not know your true identity, do you?

Mark Kennedy: No, I disagree with that.

Q242Michael Ellis: You disagree with the concept that there was deception in the relationship?

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q243Michael Ellis: Can you elaborate? Can you explain why?

Mark Kennedy: Because the person that I was seeing, the person that I was sleeping with, was sleeping with Mark Stone.

Chair: With Mark Stone? That is you.

Q244Michael Ellis: So you are saying that because she knew you as an individual called Mark Stone there was no deception that she did not know that your other job was a police officer?

Mark Kennedy: In the sense that I was an undercover police officer, I accept your point, but in the world that I was working in then for all intents and purposes I was Mark Stone.

Q245Michael Ellis: I see. Just one more thing: did you conduct yourself in that way because it aided you in the undercover work you were doing, or did you do it because you wanted to do it? If you wanted to do it, would you have done it with any female of any description or any male, for that matter, of any description? In other words, was there any part of you that did this for your own personal gratification, or was it part of your job?

Mark Kennedy: The circumstances that arose whereby I had a relationship with two different women were circumstances that were outside of my job and were circumstances that related to our friendship and what we had shared together.

Q246Michael Ellis: If you wanted to get closer to someone who could give you more information about the case that you were working on, and you felt in your best judgment the way of doing that would be to sleep with an individual, would you have done that with anyone?

Mark Kennedy: No. The two people that are involved provided no intelligence at all.

Q247Michael Ellis: But would you have done it with anyone?

Mark Kennedy: No.

Q248Lorraine Fullbrook: Sir Denis O’Connor said that you defied your boss’s instructions to stop working after the demonstration at the Drax Power Station and that you went back to the activists, where you believe that you received more succour from the activists than you did from the police. One has to ask, as an undercover police officer in a demonstration and you were beaten up as an activist, what did you expect?

Mark Kennedy: Can you explain, please?

Lorraine Fullbrook: You were masquerading as an activist.

Mark Kennedy: Correct.

Lorraine Fullbrook: What did you expect to happen? Did you expect them to leave you alone?

Mark Kennedy: Are you talking about the activists?

Lorraine Fullbrook: No, police.

Mark Kennedy: I don’t really understand what your question is.

Q249Lorraine Fullbrook: You went back to the activists for succour because you believed that the police had beaten you up, and they helped you instead and the police had not looked after you. But if you are undercover, other police officers would not know you are undercover.

Mark Kennedy: That is correct.

Lorraine Fullbrook: So, what would you expect as an undercover police officer to have happened?

Mark Kennedy: The circumstances were-I am going to try to explain this; I am not quite sure what the point is you are trying to make. It was 2006, the incident where a number of people were arrested, myself being one of them. The whole management of that particular event at Drax, in my opinion, was handled extremely badly. The decision for me to go on the march and go to the rear fence of Drax was a last-minute decision. The decision-making process was changing the whole time, and it was making an extremely stressful situation for myself and other undercover officers who were also deployed there. In my opinion, I made a strategic decision that in being released from custody the circumstances of the environment in which I was deployed is very much a caring environment. Everybody looks after each other and takes care of each other. I felt, and I had the discussion with my cover officer, that just to leave there and then, straightaway, without even going back to the camp to collect any belongings, would jeopardise the covertness of the operation.

Q250Lorraine Fullbrook: So that is why Sir Denis said that you defied your boss’s instructions and-

Mark Kennedy: No, I didn’t defy my boss’s instructions at all. The decision was made through myself in discussion with my cover officer via the telephone and my cover officer would then pass that information back up to the senior officers in charge.

Q251Lorraine Fullbrook: But you have already said that you had decided at the last minute to go on this demonstration.

Mark Kennedy: I did not decide to go on the demonstration at the last minute. The decision was made for me that they required me to go on the demonstration. We had already put in a displacement plan whereby I did not need to go to the fence at Drax.

Q252Lorraine Fullbrook: So, why did you?

Mark Kennedy: Because I was ordered to.

Q253Lorraine Fullbrook: Sir Denis goes on to say that you had become resistant to management intervention and, "He seems to have believed that he was best placed to make decisions about his deployment and the operation should progress".

Mark Kennedy: I disagree with that.

Q254Lorraine Fullbrook: Do you also disagree that Sir Denis O’Connor found that you also ignored your boss’s instructions when you accompanied a protestor abroad in 2009?

Mark Kennedy: Can you explain? Can you be more specific, please?

Lorraine Fullbrook: Did you accompany a protestor abroad in 2009?

Mark Kennedy: Where are we talking about?

Lorraine Fullbrook: I have no idea.

Mark Kennedy: In 2009, if I was deployed by the police to travel abroad, then that was authorised.

Lorraine Fullbrook: Sir Denis said that you ignored your boss’s instructions again.

Mark Kennedy: I am not quite sure of the incident that you are talking about. If you can’t be more specific then I can’t comment.

Q255Lorraine Fullbrook: I have given you three incidences of you ignoring your boss’s instructions, and Sir Denis ends by saying that you should have been rejected as unqualified at your first attempt to join the covert unit. Is it not the case that you just were not suited to being an undercover police officer?

Mark Kennedy: I managed to stay under cover for 10 years, and I am sure the records will show the amount of intelligence that I was able to produce for the benefit of the UK police over at least two Governments.

Q256Lorraine Fullbrook: Even though you ignored your boss’s instructions.

Mark Kennedy: I did not ignore my boss’s instructions.

Chair: Thank you, that is very helpful.

Q257Chris Ruane: You said before that you had given information on quite serious violent offences. How serious were they? Were they murder, potential murder, GBH, ABH-at what level was that? Do you acknowledge that you have done harm, and have you apologised to the person you have done harm to?

Mark Kennedy: To answer your last question first, yes, I have apologised profusely. In answer to the question in relation to the offences that I was involved in investigating, I was involved in investigating members of Antifa, which were committing acts of GBH. I was involved with investigating a possibility of derailment of trains. I was involved in the intelligence-gathering of the disruption to the G8 in 2005, which would bring great embarrassment to the UK. I was involved in the planning of and the practice of building incendiary devices with French activists that had connections with ETA. I was involved with the planned disruption of a number of power stations throughout the UK, an oil refinery in Aberdeen.

Q258Chris Ruane: Two of the incidents you mentioned there involved ETA in Spain and derailment of trains, I think you said in France. Was this a pan-European operation? The worst incident you said in the UK was GBH. Now, GBH is bad, but does it deserve the deployment of monitoring for a five-year period?

Mark Kennedy: It is not a question I can answer. I was deployed in an environment where numerous protests were planned, some on a small scale, some on a much larger scale. Some of them would have affected economic stability for the UK quite possibly if they had been successful. The intelligence that I was providing was assisting the police, I hope, in being able to police those things appropriately. It is not my decision whether these operations run or not. I was deployed in the circumstances.

Q259Bridget Phillipson: Were you ever directly asked by any of your colleagues, superior officers or otherwise, whether you had had or were having a sexual relationship with any of the women in the group?

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q260Bridget Phillipson: You were asked?

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q261Bridget Phillipson: By whom, and what was your reply?

Mark Kennedy: I was told by another undercover officer who was very close in the environment that I was working in that I should be careful.

Q262Bridget Phillipson: You said the groups that you were involved with were promiscuous, and presumably you mean the women.

Mark Kennedy: And the men.

Q263Bridget Phillipson: But it was women that you had relationships with.

Mark Kennedy: Yes.

Q264Bridget Phillipson: Can you just elaborate a bit on that, about the nature of the group?

Mark Kennedy: In what way?

Bridget Phillipson: You say they are promiscuous, that you had sexual relationships with two women in that period.

Mark Kennedy: I did, yes.

Q265Bridget Phillipson: Perhaps you would expect that if the groups were so promiscuous-

Mark Kennedy: Yes, but then those women had relationships with other men and women throughout that time as well. Throughout the environment that I was working and living in promiscuity was rife, non-monogamy was positively promoted and practised.

Chair: Sorry, could you repeat that? We did not hear what you said.

Mark Kennedy: I said that throughout the time I was involved in that environment, when I was working and living with people, the promotion of promiscuity and non-monogamy was very apparent.

Q266Chair: Non-monogamy?

Mark Kennedy: Non-monogamy; multiple relationships.

Q267Bridget Phillipson: We have heard from some of the women that they feel that talk around this-they did not talk about you-is an attempt to smear them and to suggest that what happened to them perhaps was not as serious because they were all promiscuous anyway and that is just what goes on in left-wing campaign groups. Do you accept that?

Mark Kennedy: Certainly not by me. It is certainly not something that I am attempting to use, but that is all I can say on that.

Q268Chair: Let me just clarify the legal proceedings. You asked to sit in private obviously because of your legal proceedings. You are suing the Metropolitan Police?

Mark Kennedy: Yes, sir.

Q269Chair: You are. For what?

Mark Kennedy: For post-traumatic stress at the time, for a lack of duty of care and for subsequent loss of earnings.

Q270Chair: In respect of the lack of duty of care-I do not want to go into great detail of this-you think they should have been more caring of you in your role. Is that right?

Mark Kennedy: I do, yes. I certainly do.

Q271Chair: In respect of the relationships, or in-

Mark Kennedy: In respect of the relationships. I think I covered the fact that I do not know for sure whether they knew, but I think the circumstances are such that it is beyond belief to think that they did not have some idea.

Q272Chair: You said that they did. That is why you are suing them. Are any of the women suing you?

Mark Kennedy: Not that I am aware of.

Q273Chair: And you are not suing them?

Mark Kennedy: Not at all.

Q274Chair: So, it is just a civil case?

Mark Kennedy: Yes, sir.

Q275Chair: Why is it that you wished to sit in private today?

Mark Kennedy: Because I was advised to do so by my legal team.

Chair: By your lawyers.

Q276Mr Winnick: There is a reference in our brief about Max Clifford, and we know about Max Clifford and his clients. Is he representing you, Mr Kennedy?

Mark Kennedy: Not really, no. At the time when The Guardian started to produce their written articles about the whole circumstances I didn’t know which way you had to turn. It was a very troubling time, and I made a phone call to Mr Clifford to-

Q277Mr Winnick: If your claims were successful, would there be any financial arrangement with Mr Clifford or not?

Mark Kennedy: No, sir.

Mr Winnick: Not at all?

Mark Kennedy: No.

Q278Chair: You were not here, you were up the corridor, but the Deputy Assistant Commissioner said that this practice was one that was not condoned. What did she say in public about this practice, because I do not want to repeat things she said in private? Leave that question.

Finally, about the use of the dead children’s identities: did you know this was going on?

Mark Kennedy: When I first joined the NPOIU and I was asked to create a legend, I was told that that was a practice that had been used in the past but it was not a practice that is being used now.

Q279Chair: When was that? Give us the dateline.

Mark Kennedy: I joined the NPOIU in 2001. I can’t say before then. I was aware that it had been a practice at some point only because this one officer told me as such. It is certainly something that the NPOIU did not do.

Q280Chair: Your identity, Mark Stone: did you choose those names, or was it given to you?

Mark Kennedy: I chose those names.

Q281The Chair: How did you get your legend worked up?

Mark Kennedy: I spent over a year researching schools-

Q282Chair: Schools that Mark Stone went to? Did Mark Stone exist?

Mark Kennedy: No, he did not.

Q283Chair: So, he was not somebody else?

Mark Kennedy: No.

Q284Chair: You just made him up?

Mark Kennedy: I made him up.

Q285Chair: Where did you find the names from?

Mark Kennedy: Well, my first name is Mark, and if you are going into an undercover situation and you do not answer to the name of Mark, it looks strange.

Chair: Very odd.

Mark Kennedy: And Stone is just an easy name to remember. It is a popular name. It is not difficult to forget in stressful circumstances. I spent about a year researching areas in London that I knew very well so I could sit and talk about it, places that I went to, schools, I joined Friends Reunited-I could talk about anything-

Q286Chair: Did they give you credit cards and things? Who gave you these?

Mark Kennedy: When the operation started the NPOIU-and I think the circumstances have now changed, but certainly when I started-had an arrangement with a bank whereby the account was set up and the money that was given to the operation, a certain amount of money was put into that account to give Mark Stone the ability to live.

Q287Chair: Sure. Did you give the figure of £250,000 for the cost of an undercover agent, or was that just the Mail on Sunday?

Mark Kennedy: I think that was the Mail on Sunday.

Q288Chair: What do you think the cost was of putting an agent in?

Mark Kennedy: I am quite sure it was not too far from that.

Q289Chair: So, quite a lot of money?

Mark Kennedy: When you consider those figures went to pay the wages of the cover officers, the undercover officers, the transport costs, the living costs for the cover officers while they are away, it would soon add up; the overtime involved as well.

Q290Chair: At the end of the day, do you feel this provided good value for money for the taxpayers? Is this something that we should be investing in?

Mark Kennedy: I think it is very difficult to put a measure on it, and it is very difficult to sit here now, two-and-a-half years later, and tell you exactly all of the intelligence that I passed. What I would like to say is that the intelligence that I passed did involve the potential for some very serious disruption across the UK and across Europe. Whether or not that intelligence was managed correctly and was handled in the appropriate ways, that, I think, is something that needs to be looked at and discussed. I would very much like to assist with that, if I have that opportunity.

Chair: Thank you.

Mark Kennedy: I feel that this inquiry and what has happened will hopefully protect people in the future, both as undercover officers and people that are infiltrated by undercover officers. I think it is a very difficult job. I think the people that are out there-

Q291Chair: But you think it is a job that has to be done?

Mark Kennedy: I agree, in certain circumstances. I know there is a lot of talk and a lot of debate regarding the proportionality of it. I think it is very difficult to get to a position where you are in a meeting in the woods in France with Greek, Italian and French activists, learning how to make incendiary devices, which they want to use to blow up railway lines, without first-

Q292Chair: Have you been able to rebuild your life? I know you work now for a company called Global Open. Is that right?

Mark Kennedy: I do not work for that company, no.

Q293Chair: You have in the past?

Mark Kennedy: When I first left the police I was employed by Global Open, and I assisted them in investigating a serious offence.

Q294Chair: Sorry, the Densus Group; my apologies. Do you work for them now?

Mark Kennedy: I consult for the Densus Group on occasions. I am assisting the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department with some issues that they have, and I have also just been employed as a director of security for a large leisure firm.

Q295Chair: Mr Kennedy, I know you were reluctant to come in here, but I hope that you have understood that you have really helped the Committee with our inquiry.

Mark Kennedy: I hope so, sir.

Q296Chair: We are very grateful. If there is anything that you missed out that you want to communicate with us, please inform the clerk.

Mark Kennedy: I will.

Chair: Thank you very much. We are most grateful.

Mark Kennedy: Thank you for your time.