Police face stricter search warrant rules in wake of ‘Nick’ scandal

POLICE officers will face disciplinary action if they pull the wool over judges’ eyes on search warrants under a plan by the Law Commission to prevent a repeat of the Operation Midland scandal.

The commission is proposing a duty of candour should be written into law when police present evidence to judges to support an application for a search warrant. It is one of a series of safeguards recommended by the body to prevent police misleading judges with inaccurate or wrong information when they are seeking to search properties.

It follows the controversy over Operation Midland where officers seeking to search the premises of public figures including Lord Bramall, the late Lord Brittan and Harvey Proctor allegedly “misled” the judge.

The three had been falsely accused of sex offences by Carl Beech, who was known as “Nick”, but who was later exposed as a fantasist and pathological liar and jailed for 18 years for perverting the course of justice and fraud.

The officers failed to fill in a section for “undermining factors” in their application for search warrants when it was known there were inconsistencies in Beech’s evidence and doubts about his credibility.

The Law Commission pointed to a wider problem over search warrants saying procedures to obtain them were “unnecessarily complex, inconsistent, outdated and inefficient”. The commission said its recommendations would “reduce the scope for serious errors”.

A review by the National Crime Agency found that nearly 80 per cent of investigations had defective warrants, of which 8.2 per cent had significant deficiencies.

Under the proposals the code of candour will be written into the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the legal framework that underpins police investigations.

It also recommended standardised forms for each warrant application.