Yvette Cooper has declined to say whether she saw a dossier describing China as a threat to Britain’s national security while serving as home secretary.
Conservative politicians have claimed the existence of documents from their time in government, which they say could have been instrumental in prosecuting the collapsed trial of two men accused of spying for Beijing.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today Programme on Friday, Ms Cooper, who served in the Home Office until a reshuffle last month, dodged the question when asked whether she had seen such a dossier, responding: “We know China poses threats to the UK national security.”
Ms Cooper, who is now the Foreign Secretary, said: “I am deeply frustrated about this case, because I, of course, wanted to see it prosecuted, but ministers were not involved in any of the evidence that was put to the Crown Prosecution Service or the Crown Prosecution Service’s independent decisions.”
The case against 30-year-old Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and 33-year-old Christopher Berry, a teacher, was dropped in early September.
Mr Cash and Mr Berry were charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in April last year with spying under the Official Secrets Act 1911, when they were accused of collecting and communicating information which could be “useful to an enemy”.
Both denied the charges.
The Prime Minister has maintained the last Conservative administration had not designated China as a threat to national security, so his Government could not provide evidence to that effect, which the director of public prosecutions (DPP) Stephen Parkinson said was required to meet the threshold for prosecution.
Mr Parkinson said the CPS had tried “over many months” to gather material from ministers, but it had not been forthcoming.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, wrote in the Times on Thursday, saying the suggestion the previous government did not publicly categorise China as a threat to national security was “totally untrue”.
Mr Philp, who was a Home Office minister between October 2022 and July 2024, said: “The Government has multiple internal documents and reports on the threat China posed to national security in the 2021-23 period.
“I have spoken to colleagues who served as relevant ministers then and they have told me these documents exist.
“As a former minister, I know it myself from my time in Government.”
He added: “Starmer’s Government could have disclosed these documents to the CPS, in private if needed. It chose not to.”
Asked whether China was a “friend or foe” on LBC on Friday, Ms Cooper said: “We’ve been clear, there’s a whole series of security threats that have come from China, for example, things like transnational repression, for example, things like cyber threats and attacks and industrial espionage, and so on.
“They are also, of course, an important trading partner, and also they’re somebody that we need to work with on things like climate change.
“But where there are national security threats, we need to take them immensely seriously and respond to them, and we continue to do that.”
