Spy case against Edinburgh man collapsed due to failure to label China a security threat
Prosecutors said they could not obtain evidence from the UK Government that China was a national security threat.
The case against an Edinburgh man accused of spying for China has collapsed because prosecutors could not obtain evidence from the UK government that China was a national security threat.
Charges against Christopher Cash, 30, were dropped last month. The director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson and the Crown Prosecution Service now say they spent “many months” trying to obtain further evidence from the government, but the witness statements provided did not meet the threshold to prosecute.
The case against Christopher Berry, 33, has also been dropped. Both men deny the allegations.
Mr Parkinson said there was sufficient evidence to prosecute when charges were first brought in April last year. But a separate spy case earlier this year raised the threshold needed to convict people under the Official Secrets Act.
That earlier case involved six Bulgarian nationals being found guilty of spying for Russia under this act. It meant the threshold in the case against Mr Cash needed to have China classed as a “threat to national security” at the time of the alleged offences.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the government could only draw on the previous Conservative government’s assessment, which branded China an “epoch-defining challenge”.
Sir Keir said the UK government’s assessment of China could not be changed retrospectively. He said his government was “frustrated” the trial had collapsed.
Under the Official Secrets Act, those accused of spying can only be prosecuted if the information they provided was useful to the enemy. Last month Mr Parkinson said “the case could no longer proceed to trial since the evidence no longer met the evidential test”.
He has now written to MPs to take the “unusual” step of sharing more details because “government briefings have been provided commenting on the evidential situation”.
Mr Parkinson said: “Efforts to obtain that evidence were made over many months, notwithstanding the fact that further witness statements were provided, none of these stated that at the time of the offence China represented a threat to national security.”
Mr Cash was a parliamentary researcher and Mr Berry was a teacher from Oxfordshire. Both were arrested in March 2023 as part of an investigation involving counter-terror police.
They were accused of gathering and providing information prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state between December 2021 and February 2023.
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