The extent of Chinese spying carried out on UK parliamentarians has been unveiled after evidence in the collapsed China spy trial was published.
Three witness statements from the government were released late on Wednesday night amid confusion surrounding why the prosecutions fell apart.
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Former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash, 30, from Whitechapel, east London, and teacher Christopher Berry, 33, from Witney, Oxfordshire, were charged with passing politically sensitive information to a Chinese intelligence agent between December 2021 and February 2023. They have both denied the allegations.
In a statement after the government published the statements, Mr Cash reiterated he was “completely innocent”.
The collapse of the trial, meaning he can’t prove it, has put him in an “impossible position”, he said.
“At no point did I intentionally assist Chinese intelligence,” he added.
What does the government’s evidence say?
In the documents, it was revealed information about internal Tory politics – when the party was in government – was being fed to a Chinese intelligence handler known as “Alex”, according to counterterrorism command SO15.
They were written by Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser, who has been in post the whole time.
This includes Mr Cash working as a researcher and “directly contributing to the policy advice being provided to Rishi Sunak”.
The evidence adds: “It is axiomatic that this is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK for the Chinese state to have indirect access to one of the individuals providing policy advice to the now prime minister on China, with the potential to influence that advice.”
Mr Cash described the witness statements as “completely devoid of the context that would have been given at trial”.
‘Enemy’ status?
The prosecution of Mr Cash and Mr Berry collapsed in the past few weeks – with the director of public prosecutions saying it had not received…
