MI5 will not face contempt of court charges despite admitting its evidence was a lie

- Published

MI5 and its staff will not face contempt of court proceedings despite the spy agency admitting that its evidence to three courts was a lie, senior judges have ruled.

The three judges, including Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr, say a contempt case would be too complex for the court to manage, meaning it is not in the public interest to proceed.

The police have the right "investigatory powers and resources" to handle the case, they rule, with individual MI5 officers now potentially facing investigation for misconduct in public office.

MI5 gave false evidence to three courts in a case concerning an abusive informant known as Agent X.

The false evidence was about conversations between MI5 and the BBC concerning the agent, someone we had investigated and were seeking to expose.

MI5's chief Sir Ken McCallum said the court's decision was welcome and its judgment "underlines MI5's serious failures in this case".

"I repeat my apology for those failures, and for the additional distress they caused to Beth," he added.

In July 2025, the three judges asked MI5's watchdog to investigate how the security service came to give false evidence. At the time, they deferred any decision on contempt proceedings until after the investigation had reported.

In July this year, an investigation by Sir John Goldring - which had been ordered by the prime minister - concluded that one senior MI5 officer lied repeatedly while another misled his own colleagues and lied about what he was told. It also criticised other senior spies and found "serious and systemic failures in MI5's conduct".

In September, MI5 said it accepted the report's findings "without reservation".

The two MI5 officers who have been most criticised both deny any dishonest conduct. One has resigned from MI5, while the other is facing internal disciplinary proceedings.

Last week, the watchdog's boss, investigatory powers commissioner Lord Leveson, said the case was as "serious as anything" he has faced in his role.

Despite this, the High Court has now decided not to take any further action, either against the two individual MI5 officers, or on a corporate basis against MI5 and its director general.

The judgment proceeds on the basis there is enough evidence to initiate contempt of court proceedings against the two senior MI5 officers, but concludes it is not in the public interest to do so.

A contempt process could "not realistically be undertaken by the court on its own" and the "investigative aspects of the task would be likely to be unmanageable", the judgment states.

"No purpose would be served by contempt proceedings, which are unlikely to do more than duplicate Sir John's findings," it concludes.

Instead, the judges say if there is to be further action, it should "follow an investigation by the police, who have the appropriate investigatory powers and resources," with the Crown Prosecution Service as the appropriate body to decide whether to prosecute.

The three judges - Baroness Carr, Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Chamberlain - suggest that the criminal offences of misconduct in a public office, or perverting the course of justice, may be more straightforward to prove evidentially.

The judges have already made serious criticisms of MI5 and said the way it gives evidence to courts in future has to change.

In Tuesday's ruling, they say it is "obvious" that Sir John Golding's findings are serious and "will inevitably affect the confidence" that courts will have in evidence from MI5.

But their decision will raise concerns about soft treatment for the security establishment, at a time when barrister Rajiv Menon KC is facing an unprecedented contempt of court process for a speech he gave in defence of his client, a one-time activist with the now banned group Palestine Action. Menon denies any wrongdoing.

Tuesday's judgment does not resolve disputed issues of law about whether MI5 and its director general are able to face contempt of court proceedings.

The judges said "nothing would be gained by contempt proceedings against MI5 as an entity" and that they "have already made trenchant public criticisms of MI5's conduct".

"We have underlined in this judgment the seriousness of those findings. A criminal investigation into the conduct of individual officers may follow," they added.

Sir John Goldring's investigation examined how MI5 gave false evidence to three courts about having kept to its core secrecy policy - known as 'neither confirm nor deny' (NCND) - about the agent status of the violent neo-Nazi informant.

He coercively controlled his partner, known by the alias Beth, and attacked her with a machete. MI5 then helped him go abroad to continue intelligence work while he was under police investigation.

The government took the BBC to court in 2022 in a failed attempt to block our investigation into Agent X, but won him legal anonymity. Beth then sued MI5 at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, and in 2024 she sought a review of a ruling at the High Court.

MI5 claimed to all three courts it had maintained NCND and, consequently, the courts allowed it to keep information secret from Beth and everyone else, leaving her at a serious disadvantage.

But what MI5 said was untrue. It had in fact disclosed the man's agent status in phone calls to me, as it tried to persuade me not to investigate him in 2020.

A senior MI5 officer had tried to cover up for the man, falsely saying he was not an abusive misogynist nor a real extremist. He even wanted me to meet the agent. In doing so, he repeatedly departed from the NCND policy.