Senior Scotland Yard managers authorised an undercover officer to lie in court when he used his fake identity in a trial in which he was convicted of public disorder, an inquiry has heard. The managers have also been accused of ignoring ethical issues when they encouraged the undercover officer to spy on legally protected confidential discussions between campaigners and their lawyers about legal tactics. Michael Scott gave his false identity to the court when he was prosecuted alongside leftwing activists following an anti-apartheid protest in 1972. Scott was pretending at the time to be a fellow campaigner and concealed his true identity from them throughout the prosecution. The criminal convictions of the campaigners, who have only recently discovered the truth, are being examined as part of the public inquiry into the activities of undercover police units since 1968. It is the first potential miscarriage of justice being scrutinised by the inquiry headed by the retired high court judge Sir John Mitting. One of his tasks is to examine how many activists over more than four decades had been wrongly convicted because their trials were corrupted by the undercover units. An official report concluded in 2015 that the covert units monitoring political groups routinely ignored legal rules about disclosing the involvement of undercover officers to criminal trials and at times failed to correct evidence given in court that they knew was wrong. In recent years, 57 campaigners have established that they were unjustly convicted or prosecuted after discovering that crucial evidence gathered by undercover officers had been withheld from their original trials. On Wednesday, the public inquiry heard how Scott was part of a group of 14 who were arrested in May 1972 during a protest against the British rugby tour of South Africa. The campaigners wanted to block a coach transporting the players from a hotel to the airport. At the time, Scott was carrying out a four-year deployment infiltrating the Young Liberals and leftwing groups. Scott’s managers decided that he should be prosecuted in his fake name as it would help to bolster his credentials with other campaigners. One senior officer wrote in a secret memo: “The case should prove beneficial to us in that [Scott] has proved himself to the extremists and may well become privy to subsequent mischief.” Senior managers agreed that the prosecution of Scott under his fake identity should go ahead to enable him to gather more information about the protesters. “We should take advantage of the situation to keep abreast of their intentions,” wrote one manager, adding that Scott should attend meetings at which the campaigners discussed their tactics for the court hearings. David Barr, the inquiry’s QC, has said it appears that senior managers “encouraged his participation in the criminal proceedings in the full knowledge that he would attend meetings to discuss trial tactics”. The managers, he said, seemed to have had “little appreciation” of “any legal or ethical considerations”. It is a fundamental legal principle that defendants are allowed to hold confidential discussions with their lawyers to decide how they defend themselves in a trial. Scott and the campaigners were fined after being found guilty of obstructing a public highway and obstructing police. One of those convicted, Ernest Rodker, 84, said that if they had known Scott’s real identity, they could have called him to testify about a key issue that could have led to their acquittal – whether they had obstructed a public road or private land. The inquiry, which is looking at the conduct of the police spies in the 1970s and early 80s, continues.