MI5 has offered an “unreserved” apology to the High Court saying there had been “failings and errors” in legal proceedings related to an alleged source accused of abusing two women.
In 2022, then-attorney general Suella Braverman went to the court in London to stop the BBC airing a programme that would name him.
An injunction was made to prevent the corporation disclosing information likely to identify the man, referred to only as “X”, though Mr Justice Chamberlain said the BBC could still air the programme and the key issues without identifying him.
At a hearing in February, the court heard that part of the written evidence provided by MI5 was false.
On Tuesday, lawyers for the BBC told the court the “low threshold” for launching contempt proceedings against MI5 and number of individuals – for not being fully transparent with the court – had been met.
Earlier Sir James Eadie KC, representing the Attorney General, made an “unreserved apology and contrition on behalf of MI5” to the court and parties for the incorrect evidence that was provided.
He added: “I am not here to seek to excuse or diminish the seriousness of that position.
“Everyone from the Director General onwards acknowledges the seriousness of what has occurred.”
The written witness statement said the Security Service had maintained its policy of neither confirming nor denying (NCND) the identities of intelligence sources.
However, the BBC said MI5 disclosed X’s status to one of its reporters, but then said it had kept to the NCND policy.
Sir James said there had been internal investigations since, and the “first and most obvious conclusion” led to the “unequivocal apology”.
He added that there had been failings that have been “properly identified” by the investigations.
Sir James also said that criticism had been made that records of conversations with the press, about this subject matter, had not been created and maintained “despite the obvious, clear and serious importance of doing so”.
He added that the creation of contemporaneous documents was the “best guard” against errors being made and that lessons had been learned.
Sir James said the court can be “properly satisfied” a full investigation had taken place, and it had concluded that the “errors had not been deliberate” and that “there had been no deliberate misleading or lying”.
He also said there had been proper accountability for the errors, including in public, “to the maximum extent possible”.
Jude Bunting KC, for the BBC, told the court on Tuesday that the person – person B – who gave the false evidence did “deliberately and repeatedly lie”.
He continued that the evidence also suggests that there was a “widespread” understanding within MI5 that this person had departed from NCND.
Mr Bunting added that person B had departed from NCND in a way which was “detailed and surprising, and that he had only been authorised to stray from the policy when talking to a “trusted MI5 source”.
Mr Bunting further said the “threshold” for contempt proceedings against two officers, a witness and MI5 had been met.
He added: “All of these individuals and the corporate body were aware of the true position.
“Person B seems to have deliberately lied.”
Mr Bunting continued: “We say it was also a particularly serious breach in this case because it had a tendency to interfere with the administration of justice.”
Mr Bunting said there was a real concern that the court is not being given the “full explanation as to what went wrong”.
In the programme about X, the BBC alleged the intelligence source was a misogynistic neo-Nazi who attacked his girlfriend, referred to by the pseudonym Beth, with a machete.
Charlotte Kilroy KC, representing Beth, who brough a related case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, said: “Beth agrees with the BBC that the threshold for contempt has been met.”
She added that “there are copious signs of dishonesty” that have not been acknowledged at all.
Ms Kilroy said Beth was not making her own application, as her other case is still ongoing.
Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Chamberlain reserved their judgment on what action should be taken against MI5.
