MI5 false evidence was a serious failing, Cooper says

The home secretary has said MI5 giving false evidence to multiple courts was a "serious failing", as she accepted a further investigation should take place.

Yvette Cooper, who is responsible for the Security Service, made a written statement to Parliament a day after the High Court ruled MI5's explanations for its false evidence were deficient and unreliable.

She said the government accepted the High Court's conclusion that a "further, robust and independent investigation" should take place.

A panel of three senior judges, including the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr, on Wednesday rejected two official inquiries into the false evidence.

One inquiry was commissioned by Cooper and the other was carried out internally by MI5.

The two reviews took place after the BBC revealed MI5 had lied to three courts in a case concerning a neo-Nazi state agent who abused women. The flawed reviews cleared MI5 of deliberate wrongdoing.

Wednesday's High Court judgement said the new investigation should be carried out under the auspices of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, Sir Brian Leveson, who has oversight of MI5's surveillance activities. His office, IPCO, was also provided with false evidence by MI5 in the case.

The Home Office has refused to answer questions about the position of MI5's third-in-command, the director general of strategy, whose witness evidence was found by the High Court to have been neither fair or accurate and to have omitted critical information, which had to be forced out of MI5 by the court.

Cooper did not mention the senior spy in her statement.

She said she remained "deeply concerned" about what happened, and that "internal processes at MI5 must improve, starting with the implementation of all recommendations made so far in relation to this case".

She added that she has asked the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, to conduct an internal review of how "evidence from MI5 should be prepared and presented in future".

"I have asked my officials to review the wider issues raised by this case," she added.

The case began in 2022 with an attempt to block the BBC from publishing a story about a neo-Nazi agent known as Agent X. He used his role to coerce and terrify his former girlfriend - known publicly as "Beth" - and had attacked her with a machete.

MI5 gave evidence to three courts, saying that it had never breached its core secrecy policy of neither confirming nor denying (NCND) that 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.

When we first exposed the abuse by Agent X in 2022, Cooper – then shadow home secretary – said in a BBC interview that the report "showed very disturbing images of abuse, and domestic abuse is a horrible crime".

"I think, given the seriousness of this, the home secretary needs to make sure there is an independent assessment of the handling of this case," she added.

In a statement to Parliament on Thursday, she said she was "unable to comment" on a case against MI5 brought by Beth, involving "accusations that Agent X committed acts of domestic abuse against their partner".

But she added that the government was "clear that all organisations must have robust safeguarding policies under continuous review and must take any allegation of domestic abuse extremely seriously".