China as been handed ‘carte blanche’ to spy on Britain, ministers were warned last night.
This country’s most senior prosecutor sensationally blamed Labour’s national security advisers yesterday for the failure of a case against two men accused of spying for Beijing.
The Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson revealed the case collapsed just as it was about to go to trial after the government’s advisers refused, despite being pressed for more than a year, to declare that China represented an ‘active threat’.
Critics said that without such a designation, no spies would ever be prosecuted, opening the door for agents of the ruling Communist Party to act with impunity.
In a letter which has deepened the war of words in Whitehall over the scandal, Mr Parkinson, the head of the CPS, said he still stands by the decision, in April 2024, to charge former parliamentary aide Chris Cash, 30, with passing secrets to Beijing along with 33-year-old British teacher Christopher Berry.
He revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service had spent more than a year trying to get key evidence that the accused pair were spying for an ‘enemy’, but prosecutors were rebuffed by officials who, as Labour look for closer relations with Beijing, refused to say China represented a threat to the UK’s national security.
Last night, Shadow Security Minister Alicia Kearns, who has been told by the CPS that she was ‘targeted’ by China as part of the case – and with whom Mr Cash previously worked – said: ‘It looks like this Labour Government is so desperate to appease China to get some sort of deal across the line that they refused to provide vital evidence to the CPS that China represented a threat to the UK’s national security.
‘It’s effectively handing carte blanche to China to spy on Britain without fear of repercussions, because it shows that no one in Government was willing to say that China poses a threat – not even that China is an enemy state, just that it poses a threat of any sort.’
When they were charged under the Official Secrets Act 1911, Mr Cash and Mr Berry were accused of collecting and passing information that would be ‘directly or indirectly useful to an enemy’.
Just weeks later, a High Court ruling on a similar Bulgarian spy case effectively set the bar for prosecution when judges ruled that spying must constitute an active threat to national security.
Following that judgement, Mr Parkinson sought additional evidence from national security advisers in Whitehall to fortify the case against Mr Cash and Mr Berry.
But he had to pull the plug last month after prosecutors were strung along for months with the promise of further witness statements to resolve the issue, only for them to never materialise.
When the case was dropped at the Old Bailey last month, Henry Blaxland KC, representing Mr Cash, said his client was ‘entirely innocent’.
Mr Berry had also denied the allegations and said he did not understand why the case was brought.
It can now be revealed that Matthew Collins, the Executive Deputy National Security Adviser, made the decision that China was not a national security threat to Britain.
Last night it was claimed that he provided evidence to the CPS that the Government did not consider China a threat even before the suspects were charged.
Government sources hit back at Mr Parkinson by claiming Mr Collins had consistently maintained the same position when asked for clarity by the CPS. The clash will pile yet more pressure on Keir Starmer’s National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, to explain why taxpayers’ cash was wasted on a two-year case which may have been doomed from the outset due to the Labour Government’s efforts to build ties with the Communist state.
Downing Street has confirmed Mr Powell will appear before senior MPs and peers to answer questions about the scandal. But his appearance before the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy will be in private.
Ms Kearns, a former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a long-standing critic of China’s human rights record, added: ‘If you look at the [Bulgarian case] High Court judgement, it was pretty reasonable, there is plenty of evidence in the previous speeches of MI5 chief Ken McCallum that China poses a threat.
‘Keir Starmer has questions to answer here, this judgement effectively lowered the bar for prosecution, yet no one in Government was willing to help the CPS.’
It was after mounting calls for an inquiry into the episode that Mr Parkinson wrote to the chairmen of the Home Affairs and Justice Committees last night saying he had decided to provide ‘further information’ due to ‘Government briefings’ on the case.
He wrote: ‘I am satisfied the decision to charge this case in April 2024 was correct.’
Speaking about the case for the first time, Sir Keir, himself a former DPP, insisted that witness statements were prepared on the basis of the Tory administration’s stance on China in 2023, which described the country as merely an ‘an epoch-defining challenge’ rather than an enemy.
He said: ‘What matters is what the designation was in 2023, because that’s when the offence was committed and that’s when the relevant period was.’
