An MI6 agent found with child pornography on his work computer was not prosecuted by the CPS, an intelligence official has revealed to an inquiry into child sexual abuse.

The discovery of illegal material resulted in the officer losing his job and being charged with two counts of possession of indecent images, but the charges were dropped after the prosecution offered no evidence.

MI6 were apparently frustrated at the decision and would rather have “seen the prosecution through.”

The incident, which took place in 2006, came to light as part of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

Speaking anonymously via a videolink fed into the Inquiry’s south London hearing centre, the serving Secret Intelligence Service official described his role in the agency as “overseeing the teams that manage the compliance policies and activities for SIS operations.”

He said: “When this material was discovered, it was preserved and we conducted an internal investigation to find out which employee or employees might have been responsible for putting this material onto the computer.

“We then passed the details of the material and the potential suspects to the police, the child protection unit, and a police investigation followed.

“This confirmed that the images were illegal and it identified the SIS officer who was most likely to be responsible for downloading them.