Badenoch demands PM address ‘unanswered’ China spy case questions

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has written to the prime minister asking him to address “unanswered” questions about the collapsed case against two men accused of spying for China.

Charges against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry – who deny the allegations – were dropped in September, prompting criticism from MPs.

The director of public prosecutions (DPP) said the case collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat.

On Sunday, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said ministers were “disappointed” it had not proceeded.

Badenoch told broadcasters she was “worried that a cover up is taking place”.

Badenoch has said Jonathan Powell – the prime minister’s national security advisor – “has questions to answer” over his role in the collapse of the trial.

Ministers have insisted Powell had no involvement in the substance or evidence of the case.

But the Conservatives have suggested Powell failed to give the CPS the evidence it said it needed to secure convictions, and Badenoch said Powell “should go” if he caused the trial to collapse.

Sir Keir Starmer previously said ministers could only draw on the last government’s assessment of China, in which the country was called an “epoch-defining challenge”, and his government has maintained it is “frustrated” the trial collapsed.

But Badenoch told broadcasters she was “seeing information that contradicts that”.

“That is why it is very important that the government come clean about who knew what, where, when, and why this has happened,” she said.

In her letter on Sunday, Badenoch said “several key questions” remain unanswered and accused Sir Keir, or his ministers, of being “too weak to stand up to Beijing on a crucial matter of national security”.

The opposition leader also claimed the government had sought to “appease China”.

Badenoch asked Sir Keir to clarify whether any ministers knew about the government’s interactions with the CPS in which it “refused” to provide the material being sought.

She also asked if the matter had ever been raised with Starmer, including by Powell, and if an earlier denial of the government’s involvement had been “misleading”.

Cabinet Office Minister Dan Jarvis will make a statement on the case to MPs on Monday, as Parliament returns after a long recess for party conferences.

Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, who hired one of the accused men as a researcher when he set up the China Research Group, said it was “absolutely abhorrent” that the case collapsed.

Tugendhat told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the government appeared to be “willing to cover up for the actions of a hostile state”.

He added that any accusations around Powell are “simply a diversion from the reality that it is the prime minister who orders, or does not order, special advisers to act”.

Meanwhile, several former Conservative ministers and advisers have told the BBC there was no official designation of whether a country amounts to a threat.

They claim there is a document with “hundreds” of examples of Chinese activity posing a threat to the UK at the time of the alleged offences, which could have been given as evidence.

Sources cited the hack on the Ministry of Defence, which ministers suspected China was behind, as one of many incidents.

“I don’t think there is a sane jury in the world that would look at that evidence and conclude China was not a threat,” a source in the last government said.

Former Conservative ministers also point to public statements, including from the former head of MI5 Ken McCallum, who in 2023 said there had been a “sustained campaign” of Chinese espionage on a “pretty epic scale”.

The Liberal Democrats said the government’s approach to China was “putting our national security at risk”.

The party urged the government to block the planning application for a new Chinese embassy in London.

“Giving the green light to the super embassy being built in the heart of the City of London and above critical data connections would enable Chinese espionage on an industrial scale,” Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Calum Miller said.

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

They were accused of gathering and providing information prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state between December 2021 and February 2023.

Under the Official Secrets Act, anyone accused of spying can only be prosecuted if the information they passed on was useful to an enemy.

Last month, the DPP said “the case could no longer proceed to trial since the evidence no longer met the evidential test”.

Additional reporting by Maia Davies