UK prosecutor says a spying case collapsed because the government wouldn’t call China a threat

LONDON (AP) — The trial of two British men accused of spying for Beijing collapsed because the U.K. government refused to brand China a threat to national security, the country’s chief prosecutor said.

Former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash and academic Christopher Berry were charged in April 2024 with violating the Official Secrets Act by providing information or documents that could be “useful to an enemy” and “prejudicial to the safety or interests” of the U.K. between late 2021 and February 2023.

But Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said the case collapsed because no one from the government was willing to testify “that at the time of the offense China represented a threat to national security.”

“When this became apparent, the case could not proceed,” he wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to lawmakers on Parliament’s home affairs and justice committees.

Under the Official Secrets Act, a statute from 1911, prosecutors would have had to show the defendants were acting for an “enemy.”

The two men deny wrongdoing, and the Chinese Embassy has called the allegations fabricated and dismissed them as “malicious slander.”

The case was dropped last month, weeks before the trial was due to begin, with prosecutors saying there was not enough evidence to proceed. The collapse of the case sparked allegations of political interference, which the government denies.

British intelligence authorities have ratcheted up their warnings about Beijing’s covert activities and Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee labeled Beijing a “strategic threat” in 2023. The government has used the term strategic challenge.

The center-left Labour Party government has tried cautiously to reset ties with Beijing after years of frosty relations over spying allegations, human rights concerns, China’s support for Russia in the Ukraine war and a crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong, a former British colony.

Britain’s top diplomat and Treasury chief have both visited Beijing in the past year, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to travel to China next year.

Asked about the spying case, Starmer said that the government couldn’t provide the testimony prosecutors wanted because his predecessor, who was in office at the time of the alleged spying, had not designated China a threat.

He said evidence had to rely on the assessment of the previous Conservative government, which called China an “epoch-defining challenge.”

“You can’t prosecute someone two years later in relation to a designation that wasn’t in place at the time,” Starmer said.