Handling of China spying case was ‘shambolic’, security committee concludes

Original article by Eleni Courea, Political Correspondent

Parliament’s security committee has criticised prosecutors for pulling their charges against two men accused of spying for Beijing, in a damning report that concluded the handling of the case was “shambolic”.

MPs said that a process “beset by confusion and misaligned expectations” and “inadequate” communication between the government and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had contributed to the collapse of the trial, while several “opportunities to correct course were missed”.

The report concludes the committee’s six-week investigation into the collapse of the high-profile trial of Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher and Christopher Berry, a teacher, who faced allegations of espionage.

The CPS unexpectedly dropped its charges, which had been brought under the 1911 Official Secrets Act, on 15 September and said the government had not provided sufficient evidence that China represented a “threat to the national security of the UK”.

In its report published on Tuesday night, the joint committee on the national security strategy (JCNSS) said the episode had exposed “systemic failures” that created “a crisis of public confidence” and fuelled “allegations of conspiracy at the highest levels of government”.

The JCNSS said: “The evidence we received showed a process beset by confusion and misaligned expectations. Some aspects are best described as shambolic.”

However, it said it found no evidence of any “coordinated high-level effort to collapse the prosecution”, dismissing claims by senior Conservatives that there had been political interference.

The JCNSS called into question prosecutors’ judgment at several stages of the processes, concluding that the CPS “could have surfaced or escalated issues over misaligned expectations much earlier”. The committee said:

• It was “unclear” why the CPS had concluded that a July 2024 ruling concerning a Bulgarian spy ring “altered the legal landscape so significantly” that they had to change their approach.

• It was “surprised” the CPS had deemed the government’s evidence insufficient to put to a jury when it had set out how China “posed a range of threats to the United Kingdom’s national security” that “amounted to a more general active threat”.

• The government “did not have sufficiently clear processes for escalating issues where there was a lack of clarity” and “the level of senior oversight” from cabinet ministers and national security advisers “was insufficiently robust”.

The conclusions pile pressure on the CPS, which has maintained that it did not have the evidence it needed to proceed. This claim has been challenged by senior lawyers including former director of public prosecutions Ken McDonald and former supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption.

“We regret that commonsense interpretations of the wording provided in the DNSA’s [deputy national security adviser] witness statements were apparently not a sufficiently strong basis for meeting the evidential requirements of the Crown Prosecution Service,” the committee said.

Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions for England and Wales, and Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser who was the government witness in the case, were among several senior figures who gave evidence to the JCNSS inquiry in October.

Richard Hermer, the attorney general, and Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, faced questions about whether ministers or special advisers had had a hand in the abandonment of the case.

Tory politicians had raised questions about a meeting of senior mandarins and Jonathan Powell, Keir Starmer’s national security adviser, to discuss the implications of the trial on 1 September, days before prosecutors pulled the charges.

But the committee concluded that prosecutors had decided they did not have the evidence they needed more than a week before the meeting.

It said it found no evidence of “improper influence or deliberate efforts to obstruct the prosecution” and concluded that Hermer had “acted with constitutional propriety” even though he was “not proactive” in assisting prosecutors with the case.

A government source said: “The Tories spent weeks throwing around baseless accusations which have been proven totally untrue. The reality is that their negligence of national security left unacceptable gaps in the law.”

The committee warned that it would be wrong to entirely pin the failure of the process on the outdated Official Secrets Act, as some ministers have done.

In their recommendations, MPs urged the government to reform its process for communicating with the CPS and give better support to deputy national security advisers.

They urged the Cabinet Office and security services to work with the CPS to formalise principles for handling sensitive cases within the next six months.

They also recommended establishing a new rule for a formal case “conference” within 30 days of such charges being brought in order to avoid such a “lack of clarity” over the evidence in future.

A CPS spokesperson said: “We recognise the strong interest in this case. We will review the recommendations carefully and work with partners to identify where improvements can be made.

“Our decisions are made independently and based on law and evidence, and that principle remains at the heart of our work.”

A government spokesperson said: “We welcome the committee’s report that makes clear that allegations about interference in this case were baseless and untrue.

“The decision to drop the case was taken independently by the Crown Prosecution Service. We remain disappointed that this case did not reach trial.

“Protecting national security is our first duty and we will never waver from our efforts to keep the British people safe.”