Lack of clear China policy helped collapse spy case, report finds
National security committee blames successive governments for failure to designate Beijing a threat.
The failure to set a clear policy on China contributed to the collapse of the Westminster spy case, a Parliamentary inquiry has found.
In a damning report, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) blamed a “shambolic” process on the part of the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for the aborted trial of two suspected spies accused of passing information from Parliament to Beijing.
Charges against Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a teacher, who have always denied wrongdoing, were dropped in September. The CPS blamed the Government’s refusal to label China as a national security threat.
The collapse of the case prompted opposition accusations of a “cover-up”, although Sir Keir Starmer’s government said it could only rely on the position of the previous Tory administration, which was in power during the period of the alleged offences.
The failure to set a clear policy on China contributed to the collapse of the Westminster spy case, a Parliamentary inquiry has found.
In a damning report, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) blamed a “shambolic” process on the part of the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for the aborted trial of two suspected spies accused of passing information from Parliament to Beijing.
Charges against Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a teacher, who have always denied wrongdoing, were dropped in September. The CPS blamed the Government’s refusal to label China as a national security threat.
The collapse of the case prompted opposition accusations of a “cover-up”, although Sir Keir Starmer’s government said it could only rely on the position of the previous Tory administration, which was in power during the period of the alleged offences.
Writing for The Telegraph, Matt Western MP, the chairman of the JCNSS, said its findings represented “a stark warning”.
“As the security environment worsens, the frequency of espionage prosecutions will likely increase. We cannot allow a repeat of this shambles in future,” he wrote.
At the centre of the fiasco, the inquiry said, was a difference of opinion between the CPS and the Government on the capacity in which its star witness – Matt Collins, the Deputy National Security Adviser – was giving evidence.
Mr Collins’s testimony referred to a “range of threats” posed by China but refused to describe the country as a “generic” threat because that was not the position of the previous Tory government.
MPs reject CPS position on evidence
The CPS argued that it fell short of the threshold required by the 1911 Official Secrets Act.
In its report, published on Wednesday, the joint committee disagreed, finding that Mr Collins’s three statements made “plain” that Beijing posed “a more general active threat to the United Kingdom’s national security”.
“We regret that common sense interpretations of the wording provided… were apparently not a sufficiently strong basis,” it said.
The committee added that it was “surprised” that the CPS considered the evidence available “insufficient” to be put before the jury.
