Alicia Kearns, the Tory MP for Rutland & Stamford, was in her Westminster office with her researcher, Chris Cash, going over some amendments to a forthcoming bill when she received a telephone call asking her to go to the parliamentary security office.
It was March 3, 2023. Kearns, who then chaired the China Research Group, a group of Beijing-sceptic Conservative MPs, expected to be told about a new threat made against her.
However, she was met in the office by police — and potentially members of the security services — as well as parliamentary staff. They asked her to sign the Official Secrets Act again.
She recalled: “They told me they were going to arrest Cash — and another man, Christopher Berry — in ten days’ time, who they believed had been spying for China.”
So began a saga that ended when charges against the two were dropped last month just before the trial was due to begin.
Today The Sunday Times can shed light on the chain of events that led to that decision.
Early last month, a meeting of senior Whitehall mandarins, including Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser, and Sir Oliver Robbins, the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, met to discuss the trial. Powell revealed that the government’s star witness would be basing his evidence on a recently published official report: The National Security Strategy 2025.
• The Sunday Times View: We need transparency on why the China spy case collapsed
This document stops well short of referring to China as an “enemy” state, characterising it as a “challenge” instead.
This meant Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser due to give evidence for the prosecution, would be unable to defend the notion that the People’s Republic was an enemy or overtly hostile to UK interests. It appears that, in the circumstances, the trial was doomed: the Official Secrets Act specifically requires prosecutors to show a defendant acted for an enemy.
Powell is one of Sir Keir Starmer’s closest advisers and a direct political appointment. It is not clear who made the decision to limit what Collins could say. However, witnesses were told by investigating police officers that it came from the “the very top”.
Delays in arrests
When Kearns, who also chaired the foreign affairs committee, was told of the allegations against Cash, she said she was in a “state of complete disbelief” and felt “physically sick”. They told her she had been the victim of espionage and got her to make a witness statement.
After the questioning she returned to her office where Cash was waiting. “I had to perform and be the best actress I could possibly be and make sure that I let on absolutely nothing,” Kearns said.
Cash, 30, and Berry, 33, an academic from Witney, Oxfordshire, were arrested ten days later. The two had known each other for several years: both were English language teachers in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou between 2017 and 2019.
The delay in arresting them had been because the police wanted both men to be in the same country when they made their move. Berry, who was living in China, was holidaying in the UK. Kearns only learnt that Cash had been arrested after his mother called her after the family home in Edinburgh was raided.
For months, their arrest remained secret — until The Sunday Times revealed the details in September that year. They were charged in April 2024 after an investigation by counter-terrorism officers at Scotland Yard.
Cash, who grew up in Edinburgh, was charged with breaching section one of the 1911 Official Secrets Act between January 2022 and February 2023. The allegations involve obtaining, collecting, recording, publishing or communicating notes, documents or information which might be, or were intended to be, directly or indirectly useful to an enemy. Berry was accused of committing the same offence between December 2021 and February 2023.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) alleged that “a Chinese intelligence agent” commissioned at least 34 reports from Berry on subjects of political interest.
According to a report in The Guardian last week, British prosecutors suspected that China’s fifth most senior official was in receipt of intelligence from Westminster as part of the espionage case. That person is understood to be Cai Qi, a member of the standing committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politburo and one of President Xi Jinping’s closest allies.
In April last year, the CPS said that a “senior member of the CCP and a politburo member” had received “politically sensitive information” from two accused British researchers.
This was deemed “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK” because the information they passed on was “directly or indirectly useful to the Chinese state”. Among the material passed to Cai is understood to have been details of a foreign affairs committee delegation to Taiwan in November 2022.
This is thought to have included information about the hotel and even the room numbers of where the MPs, including Kearns, were staying. Cai, a Xi protégé, is the fifth-ranking member of the seven-man politburo and a director of the CCP’s general office, making him de facto chief of staff to Xi.
Diplomatic consequences
The trial of Cash and Berry, who have always maintained their innocence, had been due to start at Woolwich crown court tomorrow. Senior figures in the security services and police were confident that the case was a “slam dunk” and they had met the evidence threshold required. In early September, police from the Metropolitan Police’s SO15 unit, which handles spy as well as terrorism cases, had even called Kearns, one of the key witnesses, to arrange a familiarisation visit to the court.
On September 15, however, the charges against the pair were dropped.
Cash, speaking outside the Old Bailey, said that he had always been law-abiding and was “working in an area in which I was committed to promoting the interests of my country”. His job was about raising awareness of the “challenges involved with UK-China bilateral relations among parliamentarians”.
Armstrong Solicitors, acting for Berry, said that their client did not understand why the prosecution was brought, that he had never had access to classified information and that he had not harboured any pro-Chinese political sympathies.
Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions (DPP), blamed an “evidential failure” for the decision. The CPS has declined to give details on why the case collapsed, including whether any witnesses in the government had given evidence that would have undermined the categorisation of China as an “enemy”.
It has also failed to explain why the CPS said there had been “sufficient evidence” to prosecute Cash and Berry when they were charged in April 2024 but not in September 2025. It has been suggested by one well-placed source that the bar the CPS needed to reach was raised — although this has never been stated formally despite the intense scrutiny around the case. However, another source familiar with the case said the case collapsed because of the “availability or capability of the witnesses to provide the evidence needed to allow it to proceed”.
• MI5 to advise MPs on how to guard against foreign espionage
In a letter last week to Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, all Parkinson would say is that the “threat categorisation of China or other countries are not matters for the CPS to comment on”.
The secret meeting
Early last month, Powell, the national security adviser, convened a top secret meeting of mandarins from across the government. He used the gathering to discuss the potential diplomatic and security consequences of the trial, but also raised the evidence that Collins, the government’s key witness, was due to put forward.
According to Whitehall sources, Powell said that Collins would draw upon National Security Strategy 2025, which was published in June. It refers to China as a “geostrategic challenge” whose actions have “the potential to have a significant effect on the lives of British people”. It does not describe the People’s Republic as an enemy.
Instead, it says the government seeks a “trade and investment relationship” with China, coupled with a “threat-driven” approach to issues such as espionage, interference in democracy and economic security. Robbins was also present and used the meeting to raise concerns about the implications of any conviction.
It is said that Powell left attendees with the understanding that Collins’s witness statement would operate within the language of the report, that is, it would not describe China as an enemy. Civil servants were later told that Collins did not draw upon more detailed, and damning, security assessments about China’s activities made available by the Home Office, which a senior government source said would have made it “very clear that China met the definition of what the legislation [the Official Secrets Act] requires”.
Kearns said: “The collapse of the trial is inexplicable without ministerial or NSA [national security adviser] involvement.
“Keir Starmer wants us to believe the government has no hand in this — a preposterous assertion. There are serious questions about constitutional impropriety and he should find some backbone and root out the truth.
“The state’s silence — and Labour’s unwillingness to be candid with the people of Britain let alone those of us at the heart of this case — at first gave the regrettable impression of ineptitude, now it invites concern of concealment or conspiracy.”
‘Breathtaking’ threat
In July 2022, the heads of the UK and US security services made an unprecedented joint appearance to warn of the threat from China. Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, said the challenge posed by the Chinese Communist Party was “game-changing”. Christopher Wray, then director of the FBI, called it “immense” and “breathtaking”. The next year McCallum warned of the “epic scale” of Chinese espionage, revealing that more than 20,000 people in the UK have now been approached covertly online by Chinese spies.
The decision to ignore the potentially pivotal Home Office evidence was taken days before the UK held its first trade talks with China in seven years when Peter Kyle, the business secretary, travelled to Beijing. In July, Powell also held talks with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, in Beijing before a possible visit by Starmer to China next year.
Philp said: “The most senior officials at the very top of government appear to have instructed that key evidence about the threat posed by China be ignored — causing a critical prosecution for Chinese espionage to collapse. This would be a shameful failure to protect our national security and democracy, as senior MPs were among those the Chinese were spying on.”
He added: “The government is so eager to appease communist-run China for economic reasons that it is willing to sacrifice our national security. This is a catastrophic mistake that leaves us exposed to hostile Chinese activity. Now we need to know if the prime minister authorised his senior officials to withhold the critical evidence which caused the prosecution to collapse. It seems unlikely they would have acted without his authority. The prime minister must come clean about whether he is personally responsible for undermining our national security in this way.”
Luke de Pulford of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China said: “This is the most shocking abrogation of national security responsibility in recent memory. Collapsing of a case of this severity and importance to avoid upsetting China is unforgivable, and nobody involved should be within a barge pole of anything related to national security ever again.” The decision to drop the case at the 11th hour has angered ministers and MPs, as well as the police.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory party leader who has been sanctioned by China, said he believed that the government had “ensured that there was no support for the case” so that the CPS was forced to drop it.
He told Times Radio on Sunday: “Many of us are determined now to raise this again in parliament because we think the government has in essence lied to parliament over what actually happened.”
Duncan Smith added: “I think Downing Street is a risk to national security at the moment… I really am embarrassed about this British government. They’re on bended knees to China.”
He insisted China was indeed an “enemy” and that there were “many more” Chinese spies in the UK. President Xi was “out to destroy what we consider to be the key tenets of our system, which is the rule of law, free speech, democracy”, he said.
Last month, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, told The Times that the collapse of the trial would send a green light to hostile states. “As Speaker, I take the security of this house incredibly seriously,” he said. “I believe this leaves the door open to foreign actors trying to spy on the house. This door must be closed hard.”
Hoyle is now considering bringing a private prosecution against Cash and Berry and has met Lord Hermer KC, the attorney-general, to discuss his options for bringing forward a new case. Hoyle said: “The house, MPs and staff have been put at risk. We must explore all avenues to bring this to court. I will continue to fight and do everything we can to make sure this does not happen again. That’s why we look at how we can get this to court.”
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, insisted there was “no ministerial involvement whatsoever” in the CPS decision and that the government was “disappointed to see the case dropped”.
She told Times Radio: “We already know that the law has changed. So in future, cases would be tried under legislation in which we think this prosecution could have continued. But this was not a decision made by any minister.”
She said she could not comment on the allegation that the decision was taken following an intervention by Powell, but insisted it was a matter for the CPS. “My understanding is that there was no material change in the initial evidence and the evidence that would have gone to trial,” she added.
‘Mega-embassy’ decision
The most generous explanation for the decision to withhold the most detailed intelligence is that evidence of the thawing relationship between the two countries would have undermined the case.
However, some cynics believe it shows that the government is willing to prioritise closer economic links to China over national security.
A decision on whether to approve China’s “mega-embassy” in London is expected within weeks. Beijing has been trying to redevelop the former Royal Mint buildings near the Tower of London since 2018. The plan was initially refused by Tower Hamlets council in 2022. It is understood that the Chinese foreign minister raised the issue with David Lammy, the former foreign secretary, during a visit to London this year. President Xi had earlier done the same in a call to Starmer.
• Cindy Yu: No, I am not a Chinese spy
The Sunday Times can also reveal that peers have complained that senior Foreign Office officials met the Speakers of the Lords and the Commons this year to seek to persuade them to lift the ban on China’s ambassador to the UK entering parliament. In exchange, they would remove sanctions against a number of MPs and peers who are critical of China.
David Davis, a Tory former shadow home secretary, said: “Frankly, to put commercial interests ahead of the security of the House of Commons is a national disgrace. The way it was done was dishonest and dishonourable. We need to know precisely who took these decisions, and on what authority. They need to explain precisely how they imagine that meddling in our justice system was justified. And if their answers are not good enough, they should go.”
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “The decision not to proceed with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act was made by the Crown Prosecution Service entirely independently of government.
“We do not recognise the meeting as described. There has not been a material change in the evidence provided by the government, which pertained to a period when the alleged offences took place, between 2021 and 2023.”
