A CHINESE spying trial collapsed because the Labour Government failed to provide evidence that China was a national security threat, a top prosecutor has said.
Christopher Berry, 33, and former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash, 30, were accused of espionage for China.
But the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced last month the charges would be dropped, sparking criticism from Downing Street and MPs.
Director of public prosecutions (DPP) Stephen Parkinson and the CPS have now said they spent "many months" trying to obtain further evidence form the UK Government, but the witness statements provided did not meet the threshold to prosecute.
Berry, of Witney, Oxfordshire, and Cash, from Whitechapel, east London, had denied accusations of providing information prejudicial to the interests of the state in breach of the Official Secrets Act between December 2021 and February 2023.
Director of public prosecutions, Parkinson, told MPs in a letter on Tuesday that the CPS had tried "over many months" to get the evidence it needed to carry out the prosecution, but it had not been forthcoming from the Labour Government.
However, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has insisted the decision to brand China a threat would have to have been taken under the last Conservative administration, which branded China an "epoch-defining challenge".
Starmer said the UK Government’s assessment of China could not be changed retrospectively, adding that his government was “frustrated” the trial had collapsed.
The Prime Minister insisted that as the alleged offences took place between December 2021 and February 2023, the Tory administration’s approach to China had to be considered in courtroom evidence.
The Tories at the time declined to describe China as a threat, and the Prime Minister told reporters: “Therefore statements were drawn up at the time according to the then-government policy, and they haven’t been changed in relation to it, that was the position then.
“I might just add, nor could the position change, because it was the designation at the time that matters. You can’t prosecute someone two years later in relation to a designation that wasn’t in place at the time.
“So this has to be the position of the last government, I’m not saying that defensively, because that was the last government.”
Asked if he laid the blame for the charges being withdrawn at the door of the CPS, Starmer suggested he was “not expressing a view one way or the other”.
