Senior officials at the heart of a high-profile espionage case that collapsed over the question of whether China posed a threat to the United Kingdom appeared before Parliament on Monday, October 27, 2025, to explain how the prosecution unraveled. The case, involving former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, both accused of spying for China under the Official Secrets Act, has ignited a political firestorm and left many in Westminster scrambling for answers.
Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson and Deputy National Security Adviser (DNSA) Matthew Collins both testified before the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS), shedding light on the series of events that led to the case’s demise. According to BBC, the prosecution was dropped after Collins refused to state in court that China was an active threat to UK national security at the time of the alleged offenses—a requirement under the 1911 Official Secrets Act to define China as an "enemy."
Parkinson told the committee, "Efforts were made over an extensive period to establish whether Mr. Collins could give the required evidence before he confirmed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that he would not say China posed a threat to UK national security in court." He added, "This was a sticking point that could not be overcome." The prosecution, Parkinson said, had initially believed there would be "no difficulty in obtaining evidence" from Collins that China was a national security threat. But Collins’ unwillingness to describe China as an active or current threat proved "fatal to the case" because the defense would have been entitled to call him as a witness.
The case against Cash and Berry, both of whom denied the charges, relied heavily on the government’s assessment of China’s status. Prosecutors pressed Collins for confirmation that, at the time of the alleged offenses, China was an active threat to national security. However, drafts of Collins’ first witness statement, reviewed in July 2025, showed that references to China being an "enemy" or "possible enemy" had been deleted. Parkinson noted, "Those drafts would probably have been disclosable to the defense."
According to The Irish News, the reference to China as an "enemy" was removed from Collins’ first witness statement in 2023, during the Conservative government, because it did not reflect official government policy at the time. In a joint statement to the committee, National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell and Collins explained that police and the CPS were aware as early as December 2023 that the DNSA could not call China an enemy before charges were brought.
Further complicating matters, the prosecution sought additional statements from Collins in February and August 2025, after rulings in another case in 2024 clarified what was needed to demonstrate that China was an "enemy" under the law. Despite these efforts, the core problem remained unresolved: without the government’s top security adviser willing to label China a threat, the case could not proceed.
The fallout from the collapse has been swift and politically charged. The Conservative Party accused Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer of deliberately allowing the case to fail in order to avoid damaging diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Prime Minister, for his part, insisted that the prosecution had to be based on the government’s position at the time of the alleged offenses—a position that did not describe China as a threat.
Parkinson’s letter to the committee made clear that the DNSA’s stance was known to law enforcement before the prosecution moved forward. He wrote, "The DNSA’s ‘unwillingness’ to describe China as an active or current threat was ‘fatal to the case’ because Mr. Cash and Mr. Berry’s defense teams would have been entitled to call him as a witness." This factor, he said, was compounded by the fact that earlier drafts of the witness statement had included, and then removed, references to China as an enemy.
Other witnesses called before the JCNSS on Monday included Tom Little KC, the prosecution’s lead barrister, and the country’s top civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Sir Chris Wormald. The session was set to continue on Wednesday, with Attorney General Lord Hermer and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Darren Jones scheduled to provide their accounts.
The case’s collapse has sparked a wider debate about the UK’s legal framework for prosecuting espionage and the government’s approach to defining national security threats. Under the 1911 Official Secrets Act, the prosecution must demonstrate that the alleged espionage was carried out for or on behalf of an "enemy." In this instance, the ambiguity of government policy toward China at the time of the alleged offenses proved insurmountable.
According to Parkinson, the prosecution was caught in a bind: "Drafts of the first witness statement, reviewed by us in July 2025, showed that references to China being an ‘enemy’ or ‘possible enemy’ had been deleted. Those drafts would probably have been disclosable to the defense." The legal and political context, he explained, made it impossible to proceed without the explicit designation of China as a threat—a designation the government was not prepared to make.
In their joint statement, Powell and Collins reiterated that the deletion of the "enemy" reference was not arbitrary but reflected the government’s official stance. They stated, "The reference to China being an ‘enemy’ of the UK was removed in the DNSA’s first witness statement in 2023 under the Conservatives as it ‘did not reflect government policy at the time’." This was a critical detail, as it meant the prosecution’s case was fundamentally undermined from the start.
The episode has prompted calls for a review of the Official Secrets Act and the standards required for espionage prosecutions. Some Members of Parliament argue that the law is outdated and ill-suited to the complexities of modern state threats, where adversarial relationships may not fit neatly into the "enemy" category defined over a century ago.
As the committee hearings continue, the government faces pressure to clarify its position on China and to ensure that future cases are not derailed by policy ambiguity. The collapse of the Cash and Berry case has exposed the challenges of balancing diplomatic considerations with national security imperatives—and the pitfalls of relying on legal definitions that may not reflect contemporary geopolitical realities.
The next round of testimony is expected to shed further light on the internal deliberations that led to the case’s demise and may prompt a broader reassessment of how the UK confronts alleged foreign espionage. For now, the unanswered questions and political recriminations continue to reverberate through Westminster, as lawmakers seek to ensure that the nation’s security laws are fit for purpose in an increasingly complex world.
With senior officials under scrutiny and the government’s approach to China in the spotlight, the repercussions of this collapsed case are likely to shape the UK’s national security strategy for years to come.
