A police officer who allegedly flirted with an uninsured Porsche driver after she pulled him over in Highgate has denied perverting the course of justice, a court has heard.

Prosecutors claim West Hampstead-based Pc Saheena Tegally, 26, falsely told senior officers that driver Richard Myerson was insured because he flirted with her and asked her on a date in July last year.

Tegally and Mr Myerson had allegedly sent each other suggestive texts and emails, including one in which he told her she should sit at her desk in her underwear after she complained about the heat, the jury was told.

She denied the allegation at Wood Green Crown Court today where she is standing trial for perverting the course of justice.

Tegally said the messages the couple swapped were just “banter” and that she never had any intention of meeting Mr Myerson on a date.

Cross-examining Tegally, prosecutor David Markham read a text she allegedly sent to a friend, saying she had “seized a Porsche off a 25-year-old, he is minted and has asked to take me out”.

The prosecutor asked: “Was it that he had flattered you with his attention and was asking you out? He turned your head a little bit, didn’t he?”

Fighting back tears, Tegally replied: “It was flattering, yes it was. But that doesn’t for one minute mean I was going to meet up with him or go for a drink. It was never my plan to go with him.”

Tegally admitted that she helped Mr Myerson receive insurance documents and that she was sent email documents showing he was not insured.

But the court heard that she did not read them closely and initially assumed he was covered.

She claimed she made a mistake, and that she never told her superiors definitively that he had been legally driving, only that it “looked like” he was covered.

The court previously heard how Tegally sent Mr Myerson a text to say she was “catching some sun” in her garden in a bikini.

The jury was told that she also sent Mr Myerson a text saying it was “far too hot to be stuck in uniform”, to which he replied: “You could sit behind your desk in your underwear, then people will take bad news much easier”.

At the time of the alleged offence in July last year, she claimed she had just broken off a relationship, during which she had undergone an abortion.

Tegally also denied a prosecution claim that she had deliberately deleted emails relating to the case.

She alleged that she created a proper “papertrail” but the emails may have been lost after she deleted a large number from her account simultaneously without checking them, following a warning about not having enough space.

“Although I was going through a bad time, I worked hard to become a police officer. I was struggling but it was, and still is, my life,” she told the court.

Tegally, of London Colney, Hertfordshire, denies perverting the course of justice. The trial continues.