Labour under growing pressure to release collapsed China spy case evidence

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are demanding the Labor government publish the evidence it gave in the now-collapsed case against two men accused of spying for China.

This followed another public intervention by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which made clear it would not stop ministers if they chose to make their evidence public.

On Tuesday, senior government officials suggested it would be “inappropriate” for the CPS to tell them to do this.

Prosecutors unexpectedly dropped the case against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry last month, sparking criticism from ministers and MPs. Both names deny the allegations.

The director of public prosecutions said the case collapsed because the government could not obtain evidence characterizing China as a national security threat.

These lines in a row concern the testimony of three witnesses presented by Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins regarding whether China was viewed as a threat at the time of the alleged crimes under the previous Conservative government.

The CPS now said: “The statements were made to us for the purposes of the criminal proceedings which have now ended.

“The material they contain is not ours and it is a matter for the government, independently of the CPS, whether that material should be made public.”

Mr Cash and Mr Berry, a former parliamentary investigator, were charged under the Official Secrets Act in April 2024, when the Conservatives were in power.

They were accused of collecting and providing information harmful to the security and interests of the state between December 2021 and February 2023.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the BBC: “The government must now urgently publish Matt Collins’ witness statements and related correspondence in the interest of full transparency.

“This evidence cannot be secret as it will be subject to cross-examination in court.

“Otherwise there will be legitimate questions about what exactly the government is hiding.”

Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman Calum Miller also called on Labor to publish all witness statements.

“If ministers have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear,” Miller said. “Failure to confess would confirm people’s suspicions that there was a cover-up and that ministers are more concerned about getting closer to China than protecting our national security.”

On Sunday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch wrote to the prime minister asking him to answer “unanswered” questions about the collapsed case.

In her letter, Badenoch accused Sir Keir Starmer or his ministers of being “too weak to stand up to Beijing on an important issue of national security” and claimed the government was trying to “appease China”.

Sir Keir is likely to face sustained public scrutiny over the case for the first time when he appears on Wednesday during his first Prime Minister’s Questions for several weeks after parliament recessed for party conferences.

The Labor leader has previously said ministers could only draw on the last government’s assessment of China, calling the country an “epoch-defining challenge” and arguing his government was “disappointed” by the collapse of the case.

The Conservatives asked the CPS whether investigations could be reopened against the two men if new evidence was put forward that the government had declared China a threat to national security.

However, there is an extremely high bar to a second trial after someone has been acquitted in court, and this is not possible for people charged under the Official Secrets Act.

Protection against what is known as “double jeopardy” is a fundamental legal principle that has been around for 800 years.