Biographical details of the head of MI5 are usually kept to a minimum. But the agency has been spurred to add more details to the known life story of Jonathan Evans because of persistent reports that he was the secret “handler” controlling an IRA informer in Northern Ireland.

The informer, called Kevin Fulton, has claimed that his MI5 handler was known to him as “Bob” and that when he saw a photograph on the MI5 website after Mr Evans was appointed Director-General of the Security Service, he recognised him as his former controller.

Mr Fulton alleges that “Bob” helped him to organise a trip to New York in 1993 to buy infra-red transmitters for use in IRA bombs, with the idea that MI5 would then be able to sabotage the devices so that they would fail to explode. Mr Fulton, a former soldier in the Royal Irish Rangers, is suing the Ministry of Defence for an army pension.

Security sources said yesterday that Mr Evans had “never ever met Kevin Fulton, had never been known as Bob, and had never lived or served in Northern Ireland”.

The sources said Mr Evans did work on Irish counter-terrorism but he was based in London because his work focused on Irish terrorism on the mainland and overseas, not in Ulster.

Two other snippets of information were added to his biography yesterday: he was educated at a grammar school in southern England and is the grandson of a London bus driver. This contrasts strikingly with Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, his predecessor, who is the daughter of a Conservative Lord Chancellor in Harold Macmillan’s Government.

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