Lush faces heavy backlash on social media for its #SPYCOP campaign

In a statement, the company defend its stance: “This is not an anti-state/anti-police campaign. We are aware that the police forces of the UK are doing an increasingly difficult and dangerous job whilst having their funding slashed. We fully support them in having proper police numbers, correctly funded to fight crime, violence and to be there to serve the public at our times of need.

“This campaign is not about the real police work done by those front line officers who support the public every day - it is about a controversial branch of political undercover policing that ran for many years before being exposed.

“Our campaign is to highlight this small and secretive subset of undercover policing that undermines and threatens the very idea of democracy. There is an age old understanding that our government and public institutions are there to protect and preserve the rights and safety of the public. In the case of these secretive undercover units, their work went well beyond the boundaries of acceptable police tactics and is now the subject of an ongoing public inquiry, which was instigated by Theresa May during her time as Home Secretary when the scale and scope of the breaches of protocols started to become clear.

“This public inquiry needs help from the public to keep it on track and ensure that this one opportunity for full honesty and disclosure is not lost or squandered. All citizens should be concerned when human rights are abandoned by those in power. The police themselves have admitted in their public apology to seven of the females deceived into long-term relationships with police spies, that these actions were ‘a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma’. In a recent court case the police admitted the actions amounted to ‘inhumane and degrading treatment’ breaching Article Three of the European Declaration of Human Rights. Those victims are now asking that the public inquiry demands that the undercover units release a full list of the undercover names used by their operatives, release a list of which campaign groups were targeted, and also that they release the information and data entries they hold on individuals whose lives and homes were infiltrated during these operations. Without this full disclosure there is no way of knowing the full extent of what happened during the dark years of this renegade secret policing operation - and that full disclosure might not happen unless the public demand it,” it concluded.

The Advertising Standards Authority has already received 30 complaints about the campaign and stated that after carefully assessing the complaints, it won't be taking further action as the matter is outside its remit.