COURT RULES OUT CONTEMPT CASE AGAINST MI5 OVER FALSE EVIDENCE

Senior judges have ruled that MI5 and its officers will not face contempt of court proceedings over false evidence about an informant known as Agent X. The ruling in HM Attorney General v BBC came from Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr, Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Chamberlain. They said a case against MI5 itself would serve no purpose, and that pursuing contempt through the courts would be too complex to manage. Police, they said, have the powers to investigate individual officers for possible misconduct in public office. MI5 had wrongly told the High Court and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal it never confirmed Agent X's covert status to the BBC.

The case arose from injunction proceedings to stop the BBC naming Agent X, found to have coercively controlled his girlfriend, known as Beth. MI5's head of communications had confirmed that status to a BBC journalist in 2020. In July 2025 the court found MI5's internal reviews deficient and deferred its contempt decision pending an inquiry. That inquiry, ordered by the Prime Minister and led by Sir John Goldring, the Deputy Investigatory Powers Commissioner, interviewed 36 witnesses and reported in July 2026. It found one officer lied repeatedly, knowing he had broken MI5 policy, while a second misreported what he was told.

The first officer has resigned; the second faces disciplinary proceedings. MI5 accepts the findings, though neither does. The Home Office declined to say whether it would refer the case to police, with officials weighing the judgment's implications. A Home Office spokesperson said the case had "highlighted serious failings by individual MI5 officers". MI5's chief, Sir Ken McCallum, called the decision welcome and repeated his apology to Beth.