MI5 lied deliberately, BBC tells court

MI5 lied "deliberately and repeatedly" as it tried to defend its handling of a neo-Nazi agent who abused women, the BBC has told a panel of High Court judges.

The corporation argued the threshold for contempt of court proceedings against MI5 and three individual officers had been met.

Sir James Eadie KC, acting for MI5, issued an "unreserved apology" on behalf of the Security Service but said the "errors that had been made had not been deliberate".

The three judges - England and Wales' most senior judge, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr, President of the King's Bench Division Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Chamberlain - reserved judgement on the case until a later date.

The case, which began in 2022 with an attempt to block the BBC from publishing a story about the neo-Nazi agent, has become a major test of how the courts view MI5 and the credibility of its evidence.

MI5 gave evidence to three courts, saying that it had never breached its core secrecy policy of neither confirming nor denying (NCND) that a man known only as X was a state agent.

But in February, the BBC was able to prove with notes and recordings of phone calls with MI5 that this was false.

An MI5 officer had confirmed the agent's status as he tried to persuade me to drop an investigation into X, a violent neo-Nazi misogynist who used his Security Service role to coerce and terrify his former girlfriend, known publicly as "Beth".

At Tuesday's hearing MI5 acknowledged that the NCND policy could no longer be maintained in this case.

This policy has meant significant amounts of evidence has been confined to closed hearings which neither the BBC nor Beth - who has brought a separate case complaining about MI5 - are permitted to attend.

Outside court, Beth's solicitor Kate Ellis said this meant she would now get a fair trial of her own legal claim against MI5.

"It's a huge outcome for Beth. She's had to fight this all the way to the High Court," Ms Ellis said. "This case has really undermined MI5's credibility in the courts."

Charlotte Kilroy KC, representing Beth, told the court her client agreed with the BBC that the threshold for contempt of court proceedings had been met. There had been "copious levels of dishonesty" which had not been acknowledged in MI5's investigations into how it came to give false evidence.

Contempt of court is a legal term for behaviour that impedes the administration of justice or creates a risk of that happening, such as publishing information that prejudices a trial or giving false statements to court. It can be punished with a fine or up to two years in prison.

The BBC's barrister, Jude Bunting KC, submitted to the court that it should consider contempt of court proceedings against MI5 itself, and three individual Security Service officers - including one who confirmed X's status as an agent on the phone to me and a senior officer known as Witness A who gave the false evidence to court.

MI5's accounts of how it came to give false evidence "lack candour" and there is a "real concern" that the court has not been given a full explanation of what went wrong, Mr Bunting said.

He said an external review by the government's former chief lawyer Sir Jonathan Jones KC did not speak to two crucial witnesses.

Sir James Eadie KC, representing the Attorney General for the Security Service, offered an "unreserved apology on behalf of MI5".

"Everyone from the director general downwards acknowledges the seriousness caused," he said.

MI5 director general Sir Ken McCallum immediately informed Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as soon as the matter was drawn to his attention, Sir James said.

There has been "a full and comprehensive investigation" which came to the conclusion that "the errors that had been made had not been deliberate" and that "there had been no misleading or lying", MI5's barrister said.

He said that contempt of court proceedings "would not be appropriate".