The government has published witness statements submitted by a senior official connected to the collapse of a trial involving two men accused of spying for China.
Here are three big questions that flow from them:
1. Why weren’t these statements enough for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to carry on with the trial?
For this prosecution to go ahead, the CPS needed evidence that China was a “threat to national security”.
The deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins doesn’t explicitly use this form of words in his evidence. But he comes pretty close.
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In the February 2025 witness statement, he calls China “the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security”.
Six months later, he says China’s espionage operations “harm the interests and security of the UK”.
Yes, he does quote the language of the Tory government at the time of the alleged offences, naming China as an “epoch-defining and systemic challenge”.
But he also provides examples of malicious cyber activity and the targeting of individuals in government during the two-year period that the alleged Chinese spies are said to have been operating.
In short, you can see why some MPs and ex-security chiefs are wondering why this wasn’t enough.
Former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove told Sky News this morning that “it seems to be there was enough” and added that the CPS could have called other witnesses – such as sitting intelligence directors – to back up the claim that China was a threat.
Expect the current director of public prosecutions (DPP) Stephen Parkinson to be called before MPs to…
