What made the Westminster China spying trial collapse? Today’s session of Prime Minister’s Questions, the first in over a month thanks to party conference recess, was dominated entirely by this question. Yet, after forceful performances from both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, with additional interrogation from the Conservative MP and former security minister Tom Tugendhat, and a last-minute intervention from the former foreign secretary James Cleverly, we are none the wiser.
First, the news. The Prime Minister began with a pre-prepared statement on the case involving Chris Cash and Christopher Berry, which collapsed last month just before the trial was due to begin. Following frenzied speculation and a back-and-forth blame game between the government and the Crown Prosecution Service, Starmer announced that he would be publishing “in full” the government witness statements on which the decision to drop the charges was supposedly based. The statements are being checked, but Starmer assured the House they will be released with “no substantive delay”.
The Prime Minister also stressed that the key time period for all this is between 2021 and 2023 (when the offences are alleged to have taken place), at a time when statements from the Conservative government were “very carefully worded” not to label China a threat. He referred to the deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins who provided the witness statements on behalf of the government in December 2023 (under the Conservatives) and subsequently in February and July 2025 (under Labour) as “a civil servant of the utmost integrity” – notable, given accusations Collins is being scapegoated by the government to cover for his boss, the national security adviser Jonathan Powell. (For more on Powell, whose name keeps coming up at the moment, read Ethan Croft’s excellent profile.) And Starmer reiterated that “under this government, no minister or special adviser played any role in the provision of evidence”.
All sorted? Not quite. That was just the preamble. Unsurprisingly, Badenoch used all six of her questions to grill Starmer on China. She had clearly been put on the back foot by the commitment to publishing the statements, but was determined to plough on. That was where things started to get messy.
It was “simply unbelievable”, Badenoch argued, that the government had allowed this case to collapse given the obvious threat posed by China. The leader of the opposition was almost shouting when she demanded to know: “How is it possible that the government failed to provide the evidence necessary to prosecute?”
According to Starmer, the answer to that question is that it’s all the Conservatives’ fault for not being tough enough when they were in office. He began to reel off an embarrassing list of comments made by Tory ministers: Cleverly saying in a 2023 Mansion House speech that summing up China as a threat would be “impossible”, “impractical” and “unwise”; Badenoch suggesting “we should certainly not be describing China as a foe” (a word Starmer invited his opposition colleague to look up in a dictionary). Both Cleverly and Badenoch were visibly shaking with fury. “She is playing politics with national security,” Starmer warned. “They were charged under a Conservative government, they were let off under Labour,” hit back Badenoch.
It continued. The Tory leader wanted to know if Starmer was “seriously” saying that Collins was the only person to have anything to do with this, with no involvement or discussions from Powell or from ministers. “Yes,” came the reply – punctuated by heckles of “that’s not good enough”. Is that really plausible – that the UK government allowed the entire burden of this case to rest on the statements of one man, and did not even discuss what he might say? Is that line going to hold up to further scrutiny? The PM seemed confident it would.
Starmer also tried to dismiss out of hand the report of a secret meeting between Jonathan Powell and other high-level officials in September to discuss the case, calling it a “red herring” and a “completely scurrilous accusation”. But, as Badenoch kept pointing out, “something must have changed when the charges were brought and when the case collapsed”. So which was it? Round and round we went, but still we do not know.
Labour’s line is that this is all the Conservatives’ fault for not designating China a threat when they were in office and being slow to update relevant legislation. It’s a strong argument, and one would expect Starmer to have the receipts, as it were. But as Badenoch pointed out, the CPS decision to charge the defendants was made under a Tory government. That’s the point Tugendhat picked up on later in the session, calling Starmer’s argument about updated legislation “irrelevant” and wanting to know again “what political direction did this government give to their officials before they went to give evidence?” According to the PM, “absolutely none”. Starmer seemed personally affronted as both a lawyer and a politician by the idea the government might get involved with a witness statement. But if the whole point of the witness statement is to provide evidence of the government’s position on a national security matter, how can this be the case?
The final flourish came from Cleverly, who had calmed down enough to make a point of order regarding comments of his which Starmer had read out. “I have been misquoted,” he fumed. His “impossible, impractical and unwise” line was apparently not about calling China a threat, but “summing up China in one word, or our policy in one word”. Cleverly continued that he had gone on to refer to strengthening the UK’s national security protections “wherever Beijing’s actions pose a threat to our people or prosperity”, and had announced that “when there are tensions with other objections we will always put our national security first”. If Starmer’s argument rests on his Tory predecessors being too soft on China, Cleverly was there to offer a partial rebuttal.
But is that really what the collapse of the trial hinges on? The truth is that we still don’t know – and legal experts are sceptical. “The more one knows about this case, the more confusing it becomes,” wrote the independent lawyer and legal commentator David Allen Green, who has been following the case closely. “The CPS insists on further evidence it does not require, and the government insists it could not give that evidence, even though it could. Neither side makes sense, and together they make no sense absolutely.” Perhaps the publication of the witness statements will help us understand what happened. Perhaps there is some as-yet undisclosed piece of information that will allow it all to make sense. But right now, neither the Conservative nor the Labour government’s positions look especially watertight. This might be a fight no one wins.
[Further reading: Powell vs Phillipson is an old battle reborn]
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