5 mins till today's #spycopsinquiry hearings begin - first up today, at 10:00am, is Phillippa Kaufmann QC.
She's speaking on behalf of 21 of the women who were deceived into relationships by #spycops officers

Mitting: has asked people not to name 'Carlo Neri' in their opening statements - on pain of not having their contribution live-streamed today

Phillippa is now asking for clarification about this. She will not be using Carlo's real name...

Phillippa Kaufmann QC, speaking on behalf of twenty one different women who were deceived by #spycops
They are represented by 3 different legal firms: Birnberg Peirce, @hjacivillibs and @hickmanandrose

Her written statement gives full details of each woman's story. She will be focussing today on the common issues and themes that the written statement addresses

We now know of more than 30 women who were deceived in this way – some of them are represented by other lawyers in this Inquiry – with the earliest case that we know of dating back to 1975 ('Mary' and 'Rick Gibson')

It's likely that there are still other women out there who are yet to discover that their personal lives were infiltrated in the same way. The extensive anonymity given to former #spycops by this Inquiry means that these women will continue to be denied the truth.

This will also hamper the inquiry from reaching the truth.
Most of the women who were deceived were involved to some degree with political or campaigning activity challenging oppression and injustice and seeking a better, more sustainable world.

Such political freedom of speech and protest is the bedrock of democratic societies across the world, protected by both international and domestic law

Some of the women were not themselves political, but happened to be useful to officers giving them ‘cover’ to gain entry to, or maintain ties with, political groups with whom the woman had friendships

To the extent that there was any 3 legitimate policing interest at all in the groups with which the women were involved, it is out of all proportion to the devastation inflicted by the infiltration of their bodies, emotional lives, families and homes.

These relationships amounted to the most serious violations of the women’s human rights, including their rights to privacy, to freedom of expression and association and most significantly, their right not to be subject to inhuman and degrading treatment, a right which is absolute

Phillippa made it very clear: “There was -and could be – no lawful excuse for such seriously abusive relationships.”

These deceitful relationships can never be justified and it's insulting to suggest otherwise

Talk turned to the 'institutional sexism' that drove this practice – itself a reflection of deeply sexist attitudes that pervaded the police in general, & the #spycops units in particular.
The women were treated as objects, as props to shore up the officers' fake identities.

It was overwhelmingly women that were affected by this.
The police's sexist attitudes didn't just impact the women they spied on in this way, but also the wives of the #spycops – there seems to have been no consideration or respect of their rights either.

We know that this was a deliberate tactic: deploying married officers was thought to reduce the risk of them 'going rogue' – defecting from the police.