Sir Hugh Orde, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) gave a seminar organised by human rights pressure group Liberty yesterday morning. Orde proposed that undercover police officers should require judicial approval before being deployed. You currently need magisterial approval to raid a home, and the Home Secretary’s personal permissions to tap a phone. However, there is no independent oversight required to infiltrate a group or individual, which is possibly a far more intrusive method of intelligence gathering.

While Orde’s comments represent a step in the right direction, they only serve to highlight what an utter disgrace the undercover policing of protesters has been. The revelations that continue to emerge in the international press show a very ugly reality.

But so far we only know snippets of this ugly reality. Many questions remain unanswered. Radical change is required to stop what has happened ever happening again, but first we need the full set of facts to be laid bare. This will only happen through a genuinely independent and wide ranging judicial inquiry.