Starmer has serious questions to answer over the China spy trial

More people should be talking about the China spy case.

Last month, charges against British citizens Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry were suddenly dropped. Cash and Berry – from Whitechapel and Oxfordshire respectively – were charged in 2023 under the Official Secrets Act. It was alleged that they had spied for China from December 2021 to February 2023.

Cash and Berry appeared briefly at the Old Bailey in October last year to plead not guilty, and the case dropped out of the news cycle. But it returned to the front pages this week, after a sensational intervention by the director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson.

Parkinson has essentially blamed Labour for the collapse of the trial. In a letter to the House of Commons, he said that the government had failed to provide him with critical evidence – namely, evidence showing China was deemed a ‘threat to national security’. He said: ‘Efforts to obtain that evidence were made over many months, but notwithstanding the fact that further witness statements were provided, none of these stated that at the time of the offence China represented a threat to national security.’

In the House of Commons this week, prime minister Keir Starmer claimed that his government was unable to provide evidence that China was an ‘enemy’ of the UK. He cited the recent conviction of six Bulgarians for spying for Russia, stating that their prosecution for espionage rested on Russia’s categorisation as an ‘enemy’. According to Starmer, to successfully prosecute Cash and Berry, it needed to be shown that China was deemed an ‘enemy’ of the British state. However, the previous Conservative government, said Starmer, had only defined China as an ‘epoch-defining challenge’ in its 2023 Integrated Review Refresh, not a threat to national security.

Starmer’s defence is wrong on both counts. Conservative MP Alicia Kearns has pointed out that the 2023 review did in fact describe China as a threat. It said: ‘We will increase our national security protections in those areas where Chinese Communist Party actions pose a threat to our people, prosperity and security.’ Kearns also pointed to wording from the judgement in the Bulgarian spy case, which read: ‘It seems to me that any state which presently poses an active threat to the UK’s national security can properly be described as “an enemy” in ordinary language.’

We have known for a long time that China poses a threat to the UK. In 2023, then MI5 chief Ken McCallum said that more than 20,000 people in the UK had been approached by people acting on behalf of China as part of attempts to steal technology or intellectual property. Just this week Lord Simon Case, Starmer’s former cabinet secretary, told the Telegraph: ‘Going back over years, we have had heads of our intelligence agencies describing in public the threat that China poses to our national and economic security interests.’

So it appears that there was plenty of room for the government to provide the evidence needed. In any event, it could have provided the evidence that the Crown Prosecution Service sought and then allowed a judge to resolve any legal argument. Instead, it appears that it simply failed to provide anything at all.

Of course, Cash and Berry are innocent until proven guilty. But the government, by failing to disclose the evidence needed, has stood in the way of justice being done at all. As it stands, there’s now potentially no reason for spies not to pass on information to China. And there are now huge questions for our legal system, given the current laws are failing to defend the UK’s national interest.

But the more pressing questions are for Starmer himself. The prime minister must immediately explain how the government collapsed such a significant criminal trial. It is almost beyond belief that he allowed this to happen, particularly when one considers that he is an ex-DPP himself. Either Starmer was incompetent or malign. Either he misunderstood the law and believed a prosecution was impossible, or a purposeful decision was taken to thwart the prosecution in order to maintain good relations with China. Terrifyingly, the latter explanation seems far more likely.

It is ironic that Starmer spent most of his time in opposition calling for public inquiries into government decisions. If there was ever a time for a public inquiry, then this is it.

These issues could not be more urgent. It appears that the Labour government skewered a major criminal trial dealing with national security. Two alleged spies have walked free despite allegedly ‘slam-dunk’ evidence. We urgently need to know why.

Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author. His most recent book is Human Rights – Illusory Freedom: Why We Should Repeal the Human Rights Act, which is published by Zero Books. Order it here.