Secret tape of BBC phone call proved MI5 gave false evidence in legal proceedings
Lawyers acting for the Attorney General were forced to answer questions in the High Court on 12 February 2025, after it was revealed that a deputy director of MI5 had made a false statement in proceedings about an MI5 recruit who had terrorised his girlfriend, ‘Beth’.
MI5 issued an “unreserved apology” to the BBC, accepting that three separate courts had been misled by their witness and acknowledging that what had happened was a “serious error” for which “MI5 took full responsibility”.
The Centre for Women’s Justice, acting for Beth, expressed hope that the hearing would mark the first step towards reversing MI5’s attempt to conceal from both the victim herself and the public the extent to which they had been aware of a key informant perpetrating serious violence against her.
At the heart of the hearing lay MI5’s so-called policy of Neither Confirm Nor Deny, operated in respect of the activities of informants and undercover operatives to protect their identity. However, it was strongly arguable that, having departed from that policy, MI5 could no longer rely upon it.
Background to the hearing
In 2022, the then Attorney General, Suella Braverman, had applied for an injunction to prevent the BBC from broadcasting a disturbing report about an informant (‘X’) who had violently abused his then-partner, Beth, while working for MI5. Despite the clear public interest in exposing these allegations and warning women about the threat posed by X, the government had sought to block the story.
To support her case, the Attorney General had relied on evidence from a senior MI5 representative, ‘Witness A’. In one part of his statement, Witness A had claimed that MI5 had never confirmed nor denied to anyone outside of MI5 whether X was an informant. The same statement claimed that a BBC journalist had asked MI5 on one occasion about X’s status and that MI5 had declined to confirm or refute the allegation.
In May 2022, following the legal battle, the BBC managed to broadcast a redacted version of the report, titled The Abuser Working for MI5, which revealed that X had boasted to Beth about the protections MI5 offered him and claimed to be above the law. The report included video footage of the man – a neo-Nazi extremist who had made explicit threats to sexually abuse and kill children – attacking Beth with a machete.
That same year, Beth initiated a claim against MI5 in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), alleging that MI5 had breached her human rights by recruiting and enabling a man who, they knew or ought to have known, posed a serious risk to women and girls. Her claim raised grave questions about MI5’s vetting of X prior to and during his recruitment and suggested that MI5 might even have interfered in criminal investigations into her allegations of domestic abuse against X to protect their source.
However, at a pre-trial hearing in May the following year, MI5 argued that it should be excused from providing Beth with a response to her allegations. Citing its policy of Neither Confirm Nor Deny (‘NCND’), MI5 maintained that it would never confirm or deny to anyone outside of MI5 whether an individual was an informant – even in private, and even if the informant himself had openly discussed his recruitment. Relying on this policy, MI5’s lawyers contended that national security would be jeopardised if the tribunal ordered them to depart from it. Consequently, they argued they could not be expected to confirm, even privately to Beth, whether her ex-partner had ever worked for MI5.
Beth was left profoundly disappointed when the Tribunal ruled that MI5 could not be compelled to depart from its NCND policy. As a result of this decision, Beth faced exclusion from critical hearings in her case, was denied access to the evidence MI5 used against her, and remained unaware of most of the Tribunal’s findings. MI5’s defence was to be heard in secret, in a closed courtroom attended only by MI5’s lawyers, the judges, and possibly special advocates – crucially, without Beth’s presence to challenge anything MI5 presented.
Alarmed by this approach, Beth applied to the High Court for a judicial review of the Tribunal’s decision. MI5 opposed her claim, and her case in the IPT had been on hold for months while the review proceeded.
BBC’s report
In a dramatic turn of events, the BBC revealed – publicly, for the first time – that some time earlier, a senior MI5 official had voluntarily telephoned a BBC journalist investigating X’s activities and disclosed that X had indeed been working as an MI5 informant.
Rather than adhering to its policy of NCND, MI5 had, in fact, willingly revealed to the journalist that X was an MI5 recruit – seemingly to deter the BBC from pursuing the investigation further. The statement from Witness A, provided in support of the Attorney General and later used by MI5 in Beth’s proceedings to justify secrecy about X’s status, had thus been proven false.
After learning that the Tribunal’s decision permitting secrecy in Beth’s case had been based on an untrue account, the BBC applied to the High Court in 2024 for permission to report the truth and expose Witness A’s false statement. Initially, MI5’s lawyers doubled down on their position upon becoming aware of this application – but after hearing a secret recording made by the BBC journalist of their conversation with the senior MI5 official, MI5 conceded the application. It appeared, therefore, that the truth only emerged because of the BBC’s covert audio recording.
The BBC published extracts from that conversation in its news report, showing that the senior MI5 official had made what appeared to be a series of authorised disclosures about X’s informant status, his activities for MI5, and his involvement in the alleged machete attack on Beth.
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
— Chris Williamson (@DerbyChrisW) February 14, 2025
Why did MI5 recruit a neo-Nazi?
How many other neo-Nazis have been recruited as MI5 agents?
Are the activities of the UK's security services compatible with democracy? pic.twitter.com/bFfna7Rmi4
The hearing
At the High Court hearing before Mr Justice Chamberlain, Sir James Eadie KC submitted on behalf of the Attorney General that an internal disciplinary investigation was underway, indicating the seriousness with which the matter was being treated. The former head of the Government Legal Service, Jonathan Jones KC, had also been appointed by the Home Secretary as an external reviewer to investigate the circumstances surrounding MI5’s false statement.
Mr Justice Chamberlain noted that the ongoing investigations would need to address whether MI5 had “deliberately” provided false evidence in 2022.
Beth must now await decisions from both the Administrative Court and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in the aftermath of this significant new information. She had been in dispute with MI5 for nearly a year over its reliance on NCND in her case and had engaged in judicial review proceedings which, it now appeared, might not have been necessary.
Quotes
Kate Ellis, solicitor at the Centre for Women’s Justice, who had represented Beth since 2022 and was interviewed by the BBC, said:
“…the revelations were concerning and truly extraordinary. We now understand that MI5 misled three courts by giving or relying on false evidence – over several years – and this allowed them to avoid giving ‘Beth’ any meaningful answers. This occurred in circumstances where Beth’s ex-partner had specifically boasted of his MI5 status to her and used this to abuse her.
“Most concerning of all, perhaps, is that the truth only emerged because of a secret recording made by the BBC. Until the BBC disclosed this secret tape to MI5, it appears that MI5 and their lawyers robustly maintained their original version of events.
“This exceptionally serious situation has wide implications for Beth’s case and for the general public. It leaves many wondering whether evidence given by MI5 in legal proceedings – which courts are expected to treat with particular deference and which is often heard in secret – can ever be considered reliable. It also raises questions about MI5’s willingness to engage meaningfully with concerns about their management of threats to the physical safety of women and girls.”
Harriet Wistrich, Director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, added:
“The claim brought by Beth against MI5 raised issues of the utmost gravity, in particular highlighting whether MI5 owed her any responsibility to constrain the activities of one of their informants responsible for inflicting serious violence upon her. As we saw in the scandal concerning undercover police officers engaging in deceitful relationships with the women they spied on, this case raised serious questions about the state’s duty to prevent the abuse of women in all circumstances. Reliance on NCND should never have been a smokescreen for such state complicity.”
