Now ex-national security chief wades into China spying row saying Beijing IS a ‘threat’ and he can’t ‘understand’ why case collapsed – as Starmer dodges again on what happened

Keir Starmer faced more questions over the China spying row today as a former national security chief admitted he was bewildered about the case collapsing.

Lord Mark Sedwill, who held the post when Theresa May was in No10, said it was obvious that Beijing constituted a ‘threat’.

He also suggested it was wrong to argue that only espionage carried out for enemy states could lead to prosecution.  

Ex-Cabinet Secretary Lord Case has also waded in to point out that intelligence chiefs had been publicly describing China as a ‘threat’ for ‘years’.

But asked during his visit to India today for an explanation of what had happened, Sir Keir merely stressed that the government’s evidence for the case had been drawn up under the Tories. ‘No ministers were involved in any of the decisions… the evidence was the evidence as it then was. That’s the only evidence,’ the PM told a press conference. 

Sources said afterwards that current National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell also had no role in the case. 

The allegations against Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry were dropped on September 15 before the could come to trial, sparking a backlash across political parties. Both had denied any wrongdoing.

The decision reportedly came after senior Whitehall officials met to discuss the case, including Mr Powell and the Foreign Office’s top civil servant Sir Oliver Robbins. The government insisted the decision was taken independently by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Lord Mark Sedwill, who held the post when Theresa May was in No10, said it was obvious that Beijing constituted a ‘threat’

To prove the case under the Official Secrets Act 1911, prosecutors would have had to show the defendants were acting for an ‘enemy’.

In a letter to the chairmen of the home affairs and justice committees, Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said: ‘It was considered that further evidence should be obtained.

‘Efforts to obtain that evidence were made over many months, but notwithstanding the fact that further witness statements were provided, none of these stated that at the time of the offence China represented a threat to national security, and by late August 2025 it was realised that this evidence would not be forthcoming.

‘When this became apparent, the case could not proceed.’

Mr Parkinson added that a High Court judgment in a separate Russian spying case last year ruled that an ‘enemy’ under the 1911 Act must be a country which represents a threat to the national security of the UK ‘at the time of the offence’.

Lord Sedwill told Mark Urban’s The Crisis Room podcast ‘the truth is that, of course, China is a national security threat to the UK’. 

He added: ‘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. But it’s clear that’s partly why we had to introduce the new legislation so there was no ambiguity about that.’ 

Lord Case told The Telegraph today: ‘Going back over years we have had heads of our intelligence agencies describing in public the threat that China poses to our national and economic security interests.’ 

But asked about the situation this afternoon, Sir Keir said: ‘The evidence in this case was drawn up at the time and reflected the position as it was at the time. And that has remained the situation from start to finish. That is inevitably the case, because in the United Kingdom you can only try people on the basis of the situation as it was at the time.

‘You can’t try people on the basis of situation as it now is or might be in the future. And therefore, the only evidence that a court would ever admit on this would be evidence of what the situation was at the time.

Lord Case, who served as Cabinet Secretary under Sir Keir and Rishi Sunak, pointed out that intelligence chiefs had been publicly describing Beijing as a ‘threat’ for ‘years’

‘So that’s the base on which the evidence was drawn up, the witness statements were drawn up. And I can be absolutely clear, no ministers were involved in any of the decisions since this Government’s been in in relation to the evidence that’s put before the court on this issue.

‘The evidence was the evidence as it then was, that’s the only relevant evidence, and that evidence was the situation as it was under the last government, the Tory government, rather than under this Government.

‘It’s not a party political point. It’s a matter of law. You can only try someone on the basis of the situation as it was at the time of the alleged offence.

‘You can’t try them on the basis of the situation as it might evolve, weeks, months, years down the line. That’s a fundamental and that’s at the centre of this particular issue.’