A British undercover police officer who spied on leftwing and animal rights groups has admitted he lied to the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry (a long-running public investigation into decades of covert surveillance of activists in the UK) when he denied having sexual relationships during his deployment. The officer, who used the alias Dave Evans and infiltrated groups including the Socialist Workers Party between 1998 and 2005, was forced to acknowledge a relationship lasting at least six months — and possibly two years — after campaigners presented evidence of it to the inquiry. The admission highlights one of the inquiry's central concerns: that undercover officers routinely formed intimate relationships with women without revealing their true identities, with four officers having fathered, or allegedly fathered, children with women they met while working covertly.