Treasury accused of blocking China audit after espionage trial fiasco
The Treasury lobbied Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, to block reports on the threat posed by Beijing in the midst of the probe against the two men accused of spying for China.
According to The Telegraph, in June, Powell decided the UK government would not publish details about espionage from the Foreign Office’s China audit, a cross-Whitehall analysis of Britain’s relationship with Beijing.
His decision followed comments from Treasury officials that releasing information from the “comprehensive” analysis of China’s influence in Britain could damage trade and investment links.
MPs were expecting the government to release redacted details about the national security threat from China from the audit over the Summer.
However, after receiving complaints from the Treasury, Powell decided that the report would instead be folded into his National Security Strategy (NSS), a separate document published in June, according to The Telegraph.
A government spokesperson said the China audit was not published in detail because much of its content was classified.
This comes as the government was accused of failing to brand China a threat to national security, in hopes of protecting the UK’s trade deal with the country.
The press questions whether ministers or Powell were involved in the dropping of the espionage case against two men earlier this month. The Prime Minister, currently in India, denies that ministers were involved in the collapse of the trial.
“I can be absolutely clear no ministers were involved in any of the decisions since this government’s been in, in relation to the evidence that’s put before the court on this issue,” he stated.
Christopher Cash (30), a former parliamentary researcher and director of the China Research Group, and Christopher Berry (33), a former English teacher in China, were charged last year with breaching section one of the 1911 Official Secrets Act.
The allegations involve obtaining, collecting, recording, publishing, or communicating notes, documents, or information that might be, or were intended to be, directly or indirectly useful to an enemy. Both men deny the allegations.
However, earlier in the month, and just one month before the trial was meant to begin, the case collapsed after the prosecutor, Tom Little KC, told the judge at the Old Bailey, “We simply cannot continue to prosecute this case.”
Labour’s role under scrutiny
Since then, questions have been raised in Whitehall over the government’s involvement.
The UK’s terror law watchdog has insisted China is a “threat to national security” and is now investigating the matter after the collapse of the trial.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)’s top prosecutor, Stephen Parkinson, said that they correctly charged Cash and Berry under the Official Secrets Act, but had to review the case following a High Court judgment in the case of five Bulgarian citizens found guilty of spying in the UK for Russia.
The men were charged under the 1911 Act, which criminalised acts “useful to an enemy”, a classification the UK government does not apply to China. The National Security Act replaced this Act in December 2023.
Speaking to City PM, Nick Vamos, head of business crime and investigations at Peters & Peters, and a former head of special crime at the CPS, said Parkinson’s explanation “doesn’t add up.”
He explained, “The Court of Appeal decision in the Bulgarian spy case expanded rather than restricted the definition of ‘enemy’. The Court explicitly stated that “we do not think that this term raises a question of any particular complexity” and that “enemy means the same thing now as it did (since the Act came into force)” which includes countries that represent a current threat to national security. The judgment did not set any new evidential bars.”
Even the former national security adviser Lord Sedwill raised questions over the explanation provided for the collapse of the case. In a Podcast episode, he said he was “genuinely puzzled” that the trial had fallen apart on the basis that China was deemed not to be a security threat.