The Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill (CHIS Bill/SpyCops Bill) has moved into the House of Lords.  If the Bill becomes law it will legitimise a broad range of agencies, including for example the Food Standards Agency, to authorise undercover spying.

Despite claims to the contrary it places no constraints on actions, failing to rule out murder, torture or violation of the sexual integrity of individuals.
 
The Tories are pushing the Bill through at a time when the Undercover Policing Inquiry, set up in 2015, to investigate undercover policing in England and Wales since 1968, has still not completed its work.
 
That inquiry is looking at the work of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) and is investigating the cases of male undercover police officers who entered into and maintained intimate relationships with women activists engaged in anti-racist campaigning, environmental activism, the trade unions and a range of labour-movement and left political organisations.
 
The revelations from the inquiry expose the fact that the overwhelming focus of the SpyCops has been on members of the trade-union and labour movement.
 
This evidence is backed up by recently released Cabinet papers for the 1980s which demonstrate that extensive spying took place on trade unionists under the direction of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
 
An interdepartmental Committee on “Subversion in Public Life,” composed of representatives of every major government department, discussed regular reports on the activities of trade unionists and their political affiliations and monitored their actions. 

They paid special attention to unions like the CPSA (now part of PCS), NALGO (now UNISON) and the NUT (now NEU). Elsewhere, other agencies carried out spying.
 
A 30-year covert operation was carried out against workers in the building industry by The Consulting Association (TCA) which checked names provide to them by companies like Carillion, Balfour Beatty, Skanska, Kier, Costain, McAlpine and more than 30 other companies.