An activist who was deceived into a long-term intimate and sexual relationship with an undercover Metropolitan Police officer has been awarded a nearly £230,000 payout by a tribunal.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that Kate Wilson should be paid a sum of £229,471.96 by the Metropolitan Police and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).
The tribunal previously ruled last September that Ms Wilson’s rights under Articles 3 (freedom from inhuman or degrading treatment), 8 (right to respect for private and family life), 10 (freedom of expression), 11 (freedom of assembly and association) and 14 (discrimination) of the ECHR had been violated as a result of the relationship.
Undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, using the name Mark Stone, “grossly debased, degraded and humiliated and interfered with her bodily integrity”, the tribunal said.
In a statement, Ms Wilson said: “It is important to note the IPT compensation is not about the relationship I was deceived into by Mark Kennedy. That was settled in a civil claim back in 2017.
“It is compensation for the parts of the claim that the police denied right up to the end – how complicit Mark’s managers were, and the role of five other undercover officers in violating my political rights, and the fact that they dragged out those denials for 10 years.
“The finding that these operations breached the rights to freedom of expression and assembly and were unlawful amounts to a long overdue recognition that spying on the protest movement is political policing and has no place in a democratic society.
“It is important because it goes beyond the scandal of undercover officers deceiving women into intimate relationships. Violating our political rights was the entire reason for these deployments and thousands of people will have had their political rights violated in this way.”
