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The UK government says it is “extremely disappointed” by a decision to drop charges of spying for China against two men, one of whom was a parliamentary aide.
The men, Christopher Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33, had denied accusations of providing information prejudicial to the interests of the state in breach of the Official Secrets Act between December 2021 and February 2023.
Cash worked as a parliamentary researcher and was director of the China Research Group. He was closely linked to then senior Tories, including the former security minister Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns, who served as chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee.
The men were due to go on trial next month but the prosecutor Tom Little told the Old Bailey on Monday that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) would offer no evidence against the pair and “we simply cannot continue to prosecute this case”, without giving any reason for the decision.
The security minister, Dan Jarvis, told the Commons that ministers remained “gravely concerned” about the threat of Chinese espionage. He also denied opposition suggestions that the government put pressure on the CPS to drop the case to avoid embarrassing Beijing.
Jarvis said: “This was an independent decision made by the CPS and it isn’t for any government minister to speculate on the reasons behind this decision.”
He said since the charges were first made against the men in 2023, the government had passed the National Security Act to replace the 1911 Official Secrets Act 1911 to bring the law into line with “modern-day state threats”.
Jarvis said: “We can now be confident that should cases of espionage or state threats be uncovered in the future, we will be in a much better place to prosecute them under the new National Security Act. While we are extremely disappointed with the outcome in this case, the legislation it relied on has already been changed.”
The speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, said he had asked Commons officials to review how MPs and their staff “can undertake activities securely and without interference”.
The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, told MPs that when the men were charged last year, the deputy national security advisers told the CPS that information allegedly passed to the Chinese was “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom”.
Philp said: “Given the gravity of that assessment, it is astonishing these charges have now been withdrawn.”
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He asked: “Given the gravity of the charges I just read out, what has changed between last year and this year? Did anyone in government put any pressure on the Crown Prosecution Service in relation to this case?”
Kearns said: “From a security perspective, today’s events are disastrous. They will embolden our enemies and make us look unwilling to defend our own nation even when attacked. It remains unclear to me why Chris Cash and Christopher Berry cannot be prosecuted on the Official Secrets Act.”
Speaking outside the court, Cash said: “The last two and a half years have been a nightmare for me and my family. My liberty has been severely curtailed and I’ve had to deal with the anxiety of facing such a serious charge. My freedoms have been restricted and I’ve missed significant family events and milestones. In short, my life has been put on hold and I won’t be able to get the lost time back.”
The British government has previously said Chinese spies were targeting British officials in sensitive positions in politics, defence and business as part of an increasingly sophisticated spying operation to gain access to secrets.
A spokesperson for China’s embassy in the UK said: “We have emphasised from the outset that the allegation about China instructing the relevant British individuals to ‘steal British intelligence’ is entirely fabricated and malicious slander, which we firmly reject. We urge certain individuals in the UK to stop this kind of self-staged anti-China political farce.”
