A parliamentary investigation into the collapse of a high-profile prosecution centring on alleged espionage conducted on behalf of China has provided a withering assessment of the UK government’s handling of the case.
Members of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy found the decision to drop charges against British nationals Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry followed a process “beset by confusion and misaligned expectations” that was at times “shambolic”.
Former parliamentary researcher Cash and academic Berry had been accused of passing sensitive information to a Chinese intelligence agent. Both said they were innocent of the charges brought last year under the Official Secrets Act.
In September, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it was dropping the charges against Cash and Berry on the grounds that the evidence it had been provided with was insufficient to secure a prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. In particular, the CPS said that deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins was not prepared to state in court that China was an “active threat” to the UK the time the alleged offences took place.
Following the CPS’s decision, opposition parties suggested that the case had been allowed to flounder to protect the UK’s trade relationship with China.
Yesterday’s 60-page JCNSS report into the affair found no evidence of a “co-ordinated high-level effort to collapse the prosecution”, or of deliberate efforts to obstruct it or circumvent constitutional safeguards.
However the report by the committee, which is made up of both MPs and peers, said there were “systemic failures” including inadequate communications between the CPS and the centre of government.
Among those communication issues were delays of several months between requests for new statements from the deputy national security adviser and those statements being provided.
JCNSS said constitutional safeguards designed to protect the independence of criminal proceedings had instead “catalysed a crisis of public confidence” and fuelled allegations of conspiracy at the highest levels of government.
The committee said the CPS could have “surfaced or escalated” issues it was concerned about much earlier, and that the central government team “likewise did not have sufficiently clear processes for escalating issues where there was a lack of clarity”.
‘Insufficiently robust’ oversight
The report found that, "From the outset (in 2023) the level of senior oversight over these processes – for example from the cabinet secretaries and national security advisers – was insufficiently robust. This was compounded by the change of senior personnel over this period.”
The committee agreed with the CPS’s central premise, that the root cause of problems with the case lay in the “outdated” nature of the Official Secrets Act in relation to categorising modern security threats.
But members cautioned that the new National Security Act, which passed into law in 2023, did not mean the same risks that saw the collapse of the case against Cash and Berry had been “entirely negated”.
“This episode has surfaced some deeper problems which remain,” they said.
JCNSS chair Matt Western said that, like many others, he had been deeply concerned when the case against Cash and Berry collapsed.
“We examined the facts and witness testimony in some detail,” he said. “We found no evidence of a co-ordinated effort to collapse or obstruct the prosecution.
“However, we did find some decisions questionable, and some of the processes looked shambolic. It is regrettable that safeguards designed to protect the independence of our legal system – particularly around the role of the attorney general – instead undermined public confidence.”
Western said that as the global security environment worsens, “sensitive national security cases” would arise more frequently.
“The government must show the public that it is confident in standing up to adversaries when required: failing to do so will corrode public trust in our institutions,” he said.
Among its recommendations, the committee said the Cabinet Office and Security Services must conduct an internal exercise to consider scenarios in which the government might be asked to provide diplomatically sensitive evidence under the National Security Act. They must then work with the CPS and other legal partners to formalise principles for handling sensitive cases and communications protocols to help mitigate the risk of future misaligned expectations.
Committee members said the work should be completed within six months.
The report also calls on the Cabinet Office to review what support mechanisms are made available to witnesses in high-profile cases and ensure that the deputy national security advisers are “not left isolated or facing undue exposure”.
Civil Service World sought a response to the report from the Cabinet Office. It had not provided one at the time of publication.