Former top security adviser questions Starmer over China trial collapse
Former national security adviser Lord Sedwill has raised questions over the explanation provided for the collapse of the Chinese spy case involving Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry.
Lord Mark Sedwill, a career diplomat and civil servant who served the same role as current national security adviser Jonathan Powell between 2017 and 2020, claimed it was clear that China is a security threat to the UK.
Sedwill, who was also cabinet secretary, told the podcast The Crisis Room that he was “genuinely puzzled” that the trial had fallen apart on the basis that China was deemed not to be a security threat.
He followed Simon Case, the most recent cabinet secretary, in challenging the explanations for the collapse of the prosecution of Berry and Cash, claiming that the case should not have collapsed on the basis China was deemed not to be a threat. Both deny all allegations they were spying for China.
‘Of course China is a threat’
“I mean, the truth is that, of course, China is a national security threat to the UK,” Sedwill said.
“Directly, through cyber, through spying and so on, and indirectly, because of some of their aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea and elsewhere, which potentially disrupts trade routes and so on, on which we are dependent. So, of course, those things are true.
“I’m genuinely puzzled, to put it politely, about the basis on which this trial has fallen apart. We introduced the National Security Act because the Official Secrets Act was not fit for purpose.
“But the idea that you could leak or sell or betray the secrets of this country to anyone who isn’t described as an enemy, and somehow or other, that means you couldn’t be prosecuted, I certainly didn’t understand that to be the case under the Official Secrets Act.
“Could you really have taken the whole nuclear deterrent and put it in a newspaper and that wouldn’t be a breach of the Official Secrets Act? So I simply find that interpretation very hard to understand.
“It’s clear that’s partly why we had to introduce the new legislation so there was no ambiguity about that.”
Starmer versus the director of public prosecutions
Differing points made by Labour officials and the director of public prosecutions (DPP) at the Crown Prosecution Service appear to be a bone of contention.
The DPP, Stephen Parkinson, intervened to say the case collapsed as the government refused to label China a “a threat to the national security of the UK”.
Starmer, who was himself director of public prosecutions, has claimed that the former Conservative government had not designated the country as a threat.
The Tories, meanwhile, have held the position that the current government intervened in the case for trade and diplomatic reasons, with several officials including former home secretary Suella Braverman and former security minister Tom Tugendhat claiming that they had received assurances the case would go ahead when they were in government.
A number of top lawyers have also weighed in on the case.
Nick Vamos, a former Head of Special Crime at the CPS who is now head of business crime and investigations at Peters & Peters LLP, said an explanation that China must be labelled an ‘enemy’ “doesn’t add up”, as CityAM reported on Wednesday.
Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said it was “self-evident” that China posed a threat.
Starmer, who is currently in India to sign off the UK’s trade agreement, could still face several questions over Labour’s role in the case while Powell is set to face questions from MPs in a private hearing.