BRUCE NEWSOME
IT IS now more than a week since anonymous government sources accused Keir Starmer’s Government of causing prosecutors to drop the case against two Britons accused of spying for China.
The allegations against them have been dismissed by Dan Jarvis, Labour’s security minister, as lacking ‘a shred of evidence’.
That’s of course not true. The Government has finally published key witness statements in the collapsed espionage case after Sir Keir Starmer faced days of intense pressure over why the prosecution against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, who both deny spying for Beijing, was abandoned last month. But the publication of the three statements by deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins raises more questions than it answers. Nor does it alter the evidence that disproves the Government’s three key claims about this case.
The first claim is that China is not a threat.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) wanted the Government to testify to China’s ‘threat’. The Government initially agreed, but reneged in September. This month Starmer blamed this on the previous government’s assessment of China as an ‘epoch-defining challenge’. He claimed that the CPS (which he used to direct) must prove threat at the time the accused were allegedly spying. However in 2021, when the alleged espionage began, Boris Johnson’s integrated review of defence and security did conclude that China was ‘the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security’.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak subsequently publicly declared China as a threat. True, Sunak’s review also described China as an ‘epoch-defining challenge’ but it said that China ‘has engaged in both espionage and interference in the UK’.
Starmer’s own Foreign Secretary told Parliament in July this year that China was a threat. However in late August the Government’s review of national security downgraded China to ‘geostrategic challenge’. According to anonymous sources, the National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, told his team that this downgrade disables the prosecution. The Government has denied this.
Nevertheless our national security agencies continue to describe and treat China as a threat. An anonymous source notes that the Home Office’s (i.e. primarily MI5’s) estimates make ‘very clear that China met the definition of what the legislation requires’.
On Tuesday, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) released its annual review, which repeats what it reported in 2024: ‘China continues to be a highly sophisticated and capable threat.’
All this makes it even more bizarre that Dan Jarvis denied that the Government could testify to China being a threat while adding: ‘We fully recognise that China poses a series of threats to UK national security.’ Speaking at the NCSC to publicise the report, he failed to mention China at all in spite of using the word ‘threat’ seven times.
Secondly, the Government’s contention that China’s threat needs to be proved in order to meet the standard for what the 1911 Official Secrets Act considers ‘spying’.
‘Spying’ is characterised as something useful to an ‘enemy’, and the intent of the writers of the Act is clear enough. It demands proof of ‘purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state’.
Case law confirms this legal approach. In May, the CPS prosecuted six Romanians for spying for Russia. The standard for proving the guilt of each of them was, in the CPS’s own words, that ‘their actions were, or would have been, prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom’. The judge was persuaded that the CPS had proved this.
So really all the evidence needed to prove the charge that Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry intentionally passed information to China is that it was prejudicial to Britain.
It makes Jarvis’s claim on Monday that the Government made ‘every effort’ to prosecute them incredible.
The third claim is that, according to the Government, there is only one witness.
Anonymous sources blamed Powell for the collapse of the case. Starmer appointed him last December and tasked him to travel almost monthly to Beijing to pave the way for an economic reset that would be necessary to Starmer’s plans for 2026. In August, Powell called an extraordinary meeting to discuss the spy case, days before the CPS dropped it.
But on Monday, Jarvis mentioned only Powell’s deputy Collins, the man the Government had chosen to act as witness for the prosecution. But Collins wasn’t even a necessary witness. Dozens of senior public servants with requisite knowledge, from the national security team, Foreign Office, Home Office or MI5 (agents have often testified under cover) could have been brought to testify as witnesses.
Jarvis has announced ‘that MI5’s National Protective Security Authority will be taking further steps to protect our democratic institutions from foreign interference’, because ‘the Government remains gravely concerned about the security of our democratic institutions and is crystal clear that our Parliament must and will be protected from espionage’. So why isn’t the Government asking MI5 agents to tell a court what it is asking them to tell Parliament?
Of course, the Government could have sent Powell to testify. How can Powell, a favourite of Tony Blair in 1997 and now Starmer, somehow be both in charge but ignorant of what Collins did?
Despite Jarvis’s insistence that ‘this was a matter for the deputy national security adviser – a hugely experienced, highly capable senior official who provided evidence under the previous administration’, there is simply no justification for picking on Collins alone. Though there may be a reason – that he can be tied to Conservative governments.
Tom Tugendhat, who was a Tory Security Minister, tweeted: ‘Collins is a public servant who has served our nation with integrity for decades . . . Throwing your team under the bus doesn’t make you a leader.’
Collins is the same civil servant who testified that the information shared by the six Romanians with Russia was ‘prejudicial to the safety and interests of the UK’.
This surely was all he needed to say in the trial of Cash and Berry.
Jarvis said that Collins ‘was given full freedom to provide evidence without interference’.
His three witness statements for hearings in this case (December 2023, February and July) have finally been released. Why did the government claim that the CPS objected to their release, and then claim (on Tuesday, after the CPS stated it had never objected) that the statements must be reviewed before release? Such statements might contain sensitive information, but sensitive information can be redacted.
Alternatively, it can be submitted to a parliamentary committee, with assurances that the sensitive information would not be publicised. Then the committee could report that the statements corroborate the administration. The Intelligence and Security Committee is the obvious partner.
In his first statement Collins said that Chinese intelligence services ‘are highly capable and conduct large-scale espionage operations [to] harm the interests and security of the UK’. In the second statement he acknowledged that both countries ‘benefit from bilateral trade and investment’ but warned that China presents ‘the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security’. In his third and final statement, he said Beijing’s ‘espionage operations threaten the UK’s economic prosperity and resilience, and the integrity of our democratic institutions’. Chilling stuff – and sufficient to disprove Starmer’s claim that China was not officially a threat in 2023. Why could Collins not say the same in a fourth witness statement, requested by the CPS for the now-cancelled trial in October?
Then comes the question of where is the correspondence? If Jarvis wants to prove Collins is to blame, why not publish correspondence between Powell and his deputy?
I can think of only two reasons for reticence to publish this correspondence. First, it would implicate Powell in Collins’s withdrawal of commitment to testify. Second, it might contain sensitive information, but sensitive information can be redacted, or submitted to a Parliamentary committee in confidence.
On the day the CPS dropped the case, Jarvis told the Commons: ‘The decision not to proceed with this prosecution is an independent one for the CPS to make.’ On Monday, Jarvis repeated that the decision ‘was an independent one made by the Crown Prosecution Service’.
He said that ministers ‘did not take advice and they were not sighted on the contents’ of the documents prepared for the case. If true, ministers are either incompetent or complicit but want to preserve deniability. The absence of ministers is evidence (although not proof) towards suspicions that they had prejudiced the meeting verbally, with intent to avoid documentary evidence.
The final unanswered question is how can ministers pursue China’s investment without tolerating China’s espionage?
If ministers did take advice on the information prepared for the CPS, they are complicit in a decision to misrepresent China’s threat. Jarvis himself gave evidence of ministerial motive.
He stated that although ‘China poses a series of threats . . . we must also be alive to the fact that China does present us with opportunities. If we were to follow the approach of the party opposite – to ignore China and to refuse to engage with China – that is what would undermine our national security.’
All this is more than ‘a shred of evidence’ for the Government’s motive to interfere in the prosecution of China’s alleged spies in return for Chinese investment.
Breaking news postscript (9.36pm Oct 16)
The head of MI5 has said he was frustrated by the collapse of the Chinese spy case as he warned that Beijing poses a threat to the UK ‘every day’.
Sir Ken McCallum said the Security Service worked ‘very hard’ to make convictions possible, ‘so it’s frustrating when they don’t happen‘.
This article (The stench of state interference lingers over the collapsed China spy trial) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Bruce Newsome
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