Something smells really bad here

The curious case of two China spying suspects whose trial was suddenly terminated

Is it or was it perfectly legal to act as a spy for China in Britain? Or to put it another way is the British government so mesmerised by the prospects of gaining Chinese economic benefits that it dare not annoy the hard men in Beijing by prosecuting spies? Or, is this just another British cock up?

These questions arise in the wake of a decision to drop charges against two British citizens accused of spying for China. The charges were laid seventeen months ago but disappeared as the two defendants walked away from court after the prosecution service suddenly discovered that there was insufficient evidence for the case to be pursued.

As ever, when it comes to security matters, there is smoke and mirrors everywhere. In this case they have combined to create a deep fog of confusion which may never be lifted. However the stench surrounding this affair has been sufficient to excite the attention of some very senior members of the British parliament and has put the government into full defensive mood.

This, as I understand it, is what happened: Christopher Cash, a researcher and then director of the Conservative MPs’ China Research Group, was charged with passing information of interest to the Chinese state to his friend Christopher Berry. The group employing Mr Cash was established by China sceptics, among others, Tom Tugendhat who went on to become the security minister.

In April 2024 the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) revealed that the two men has been charged under the Official Secrets Act. We now know that the charges involved passing on 34 reports to Chinese Intelligence, including personal information on MPS. It was alleged that this information was detrimental to Britain’s safety and interests, hence the serious charges. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative party leader, said in parliament that he had been briefed by the security services who told him that the case was a ‘slam dunk’.

Mysteriously the grounds for a solid case disappeared without explanation as to why evidence considered strong enough to bring the charges 17 months previously suddenly become insufficient.

Adding to the confusion was that even the security minister Dan Jarvis declared himself to be ‘disappointed’ by this turn of events. Confusion deepened as the Foreign Office then called in a chargé d’affaires at the Chinese embassy to be démarched, or, in plain English, sharply informed that the UK government would not tolerate any activity by China which interfered in its democracy.

So, the government expressed exasperation over this case being dropped and then ticked off China’s representatives in London for meddling in UK affairs, followed by a denial of any hint of meddling in the CPS’s inexplicable decision to drop the case.

Or was it inexplicable? No one knows for sure but what is known is that to bring this case to a successful conclusion under the now superseded Official Secrets Act it would have been necessary to prove that the defendants were acting in the interests of a an enemy of the British state. Such proof would not be needed under the new National Security Act, but the alleged offensive pre-dated this change in the law.

At this point speculation steps in but it is based on other information in the public domain which suggests that the last thing the government wants to do is to annoy the People’s Republic of China, not least in the months before the Prime Minister is planning to make a state visit to Beijing in the wake of other high level visits designed to make nice with the Chinese Communist Party.

Designating China as an enemy was studiously avoided in June when the government finally published the result of its markedly disappointing audit of relations with China in which, to be fair, it did say that there had been increasing instances of China’s espionage and interference in Britain’s democracy and that economic security had been undermined.

Nonetheless the so called audit studiously declined to follow the previous government’s description of China either as a threat or a rival. What really mattered, we were told, was the need to increase trade with China and encourage more investment in Britain.

After publication the Prime Minister sacked Catherine West as the foreign office minister responsible for the region. She was the only China specialist in the government and in opposition had been an active campaigner for the restoration of civil liberties in Hong Kong. Her replacement has none of this background.

Connecting the dots here requires no specialist skills. The UK government is desperate to get more trade and investment from China, even though Chinese economic relations are evidently of little importance to Beijing. Yet hope springs eternal and if hope is to be fortified with some tampering with the UK’s supposedly independent legal system under the cover of ‘national interests’, so be it.

And, by the by, what happened to the strict deadline for the PRC to handover fuller details of the use of its planned mega-embassy in London? The answer is that the deadline has passed without a whimper because even the planning system, also supposed to be studiously non-political, appears to be yet another obstacle to the wider objective of better relations with the PRC.

My, how they must chuckle in Beijing. They may even throw Britain a bone or two for being so very well behaved.