A high-profile spy case against two men accused of working for China has fallen apart — and Britain’s top prosecutor says it’s because the government never officially called China a
“national security threat.”
Christopher Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33, had been accused of spying for Beijing. Both denied the allegations, but prosecutors dropped the charges last month — sparking backlash from ministers and MPs who wanted answers.
Now, Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson has broken his silence. He says the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spent months trying to get official statements from the government confirming that China was viewed as a national security threat at the time of the alleged offences — but those statements never came.
Parkinson said that although the CPS originally had enough evidence to prosecute when charges were filed in April 2024, a separate spying case earlier this year changed the legal bar for what counts as espionage under the Official Secrets Act.
Essentially, to convict someone of spying, prosecutors must show they passed on information useful to an enemy — and an “enemy,” legally speaking, means a country considered a threat to national security *at the time* of the alleged offences.
In this case, that meant the government would’ve needed to officially say China was a threat between December 2021 and February 2023. But according to Parkinson, “none of the witness statements stated that China represented a threat to national security at that time.” Without that, the case couldn’t go forward.
A legal twist
The rule change came from another espionage trial earlier this year, involving six Bulgarians accused of spying for Russia. Their convictions clarified that prosecutors must prove the country involved was an enemy of the UK at the time of the offences — not just now, or in general.
That precedent forced the CPS to go back to the government for clarification in the China case — and that’s where things stalled. Parkinson said multiple attempts were made to get stronger evidence from officials, but “the evidence was not forthcoming.”
Political fallout
The collapse of the case triggered weeks of speculation. Critics accused the government of withholding information; Number 10 has denied that flatly.
A Downing Street spokesperson said claims that the government “withheld evidence or restricted witnesses” are “completely untrue.”
Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general and ex-chair of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, told BBC Radio 4 it looked like “somebody just missed something.” He said the government should have clarified earlier whether China would legally be treated as an “enemy.”
Grieve pointed to a 2023 Intelligence and Security Committee report which found China had “penetrated every sector” of the UK economy — adding that it left “no doubt” about the scale of Chinese activity against Britain.
A changing relationship
Since Labour came to power last year, the government has been trying to reset relations with China. A cross-department “audit” of UK-China ties is currently underway, aimed at balancing national security concerns with trade and diplomacy.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Beijing in October 2024 — only the second such visit in six years — saying the UK and China should “find pragmatic solutions to complex challenges.”
And in July, the UK’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, also visited China, meeting Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The meeting wasn’t publicly announced by London but was later confirmed by Beijing, which said Powell expressed Britain’s “willingness to enhance dialogue.”
The bigger picture
The case’s collapse has raised serious questions about how the UK defines national security threats — and how politics intersects with the law in espionage cases.
For now, the DPP insists the CPS had no choice but to drop the charges: without proof that China was officially seen as an “enemy” at the time, the legal test simply couldn’t be met. Photo by Setreset, Wikimedia commons.