The national security adviser accused of torpedoing the China spy case backed the charges when they were first brought.
Matthew Collins initially provided an assessment for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in support of the espionage case against parliamentary aide Chris Cash and teacher pal Chris Berry.
When the accused appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on April 26 last year, prosecutors produced a summary of the case revealing Mr Collins assessed ‘the alleged activities of Chris Berry and Chris Cash were prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK’.
But when the CPS requested further evidence weeks later, Mr Collins refused to say that China represented an ‘active threat’ to Britain.
This was much to the fury of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who was forced to drop the case after a year of attempts to seek clarity on the issue. Both Mr Berry and Mr Cash have denied any wrong-doing.
Pressure was building on Mr Collins – the UK’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Intelligence, Defence and Security – to explain the apparent change of heart.
Mark Sedwill, the UK’s former national security adviser, questioned his decision, saying: ‘The truth is, of course, China is a national security threat.’
Now Jonathan Hall KC, the UK’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and State Threat Legislation, has launched an investigation.
As the war of words over the collapse of the case continued, a growing chorus of voices, including Sir Keir Starmer’s former top civil servant Lord Case, challenged the official explanation China could not be declared an ‘enemy’ to satisfy the bringing of charges under the Official Secrets Act.
Mr Hall last night told LBC that Beijing ‘is a threat to national security. I don’t think the public explanation that has been given so far is at all adequate. I personally find it confusing. It deserves a much fuller explanation.’
Mr Cash, 30, and his China-based English teacher friend Mr Berry, 33, were arrested in March 2023 after being accused of handing data to Beijing.
The pair were charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act on April 22 last year.
Four days later, prosecutors told a judge secrets had been passed to a Chinese intelligence agent who gave them over to a figure described as a ‘senior member of the Chinese Communist Party and a Politburo member’, understood to be Cai Qi, de facto chief of staff to President Xi Jinping.
A CPS document cited Mr Collins backing the case, saying he had found evidence in ten of the 34 reports that a Chinese intelligence agent allegedly commissioned from Mr Berry.
It said: ‘A Deputy National Security Advisor has assessed the key information communicated by Chris Berry in his reports and has provided a statement in which they comment specifically on ten of them, concluding the information and material passed between Chris Berry and Chris Cash and then on to the Chinese intelligence agent would be directly or indirectly useful to the Chinese State and communicating the information was prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State.
‘In their assessment, the alleged activities of Berry and Cash were prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK.’
Mr Collins has not commented but he is understood to maintain he never changed his position and was ‘blindsided’ when the case collapsed last month. Sir Keir has sought to blame the Tory government’s stance on China at the time of the alleged offences.
Yesterday the PM said: ‘The evidence was the evidence as it then was, that’s the only relevant evidence, and that evidence was the situation as it was under the last government.’
Critics point to his attempts to build relations with the world’s second-biggest economy as a possible reason for the reluctance to label China an enemy.
