The Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced her intention to take “urgent action” to hold MI5 to account after a report found “serious failings” by its officers led to courts being given false evidence.
Mahmood made the vow following the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, Sir Brian Leveson, publishing a report on Thursday which identified “systemic failures” in the security service’s conduct in the so-called Agent X case.
The report comes after MI5 apologised earlier this year and settled a legal claim brought by a woman known as Beth over her treatment by an alleged abusive ex-partner.
The security service agreed to pay an undisclosed compensation fee after the woman took action at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) over a man known as Agent X who is accused of being a neo-Nazi who attacked her with a machete.
The IPT, a specialist tribunal which investigates allegations against the UK intelligence services, said in July last year that MI5 giving false evidence “gives rise to real cause for concern” and “must never happen again”.
Ms Mahmood stated: “The findings of this report are stark. It details serious failings by individual MI5 officers, resulting in false evidence being provided to the courts, and criticism of MI5 as an organisation.
“I am taking urgent action to hold MI5 to account for these failures, including strengthening my oversight and assurance of their work.”
She said the security service plays a “critical role in keeping our country safe and we owe a debt of thanks to its staff” and that it has made “significant progress over the last year in learning from these failures” but there is “more to do to ensure the highest standards of integrity and accountability are upheld”.
Director general Sir Ken McCallum said MI5 “recognises without hesitation the seriousness of our failings” as he repeated his previous apologies over the case and “for our slowness in recognising what had happened”.
“With legal proceedings still in train, I cannot comment today on specific details. However, I can say that over the last 18 months MI5 has done much to improve our policies and processes, to ensure we never find ourselves in this position again,” he added.
He said staff at MI5 work “day and night to keep this country safe” and get “much right” but in this case “we fell well short of what the public expect and deserve”.
“The best response MI5 can make is to ensure we are consistently hitting the highest professional standards in delivering our vital mission”, he said.
Sir Brian said the findings of the investigation were “extremely serious”, adding: “What makes this case particularly grave is that IPCO (Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office) and the courts were misled. Failings of candour undermine the entire basis of oversight and accountability.
“I welcome the fact that MI5’s director general has established a major change programme to address the failings identified in this report. The programme will be subject to ongoing IPCO scrutiny and I will not hesitate to report further should progress fall short of what is required.”
Separate legal proceedings at the High Court about the case are ongoing.
