A muddle over semantics or something sinister? Labour must shed light on this puzzle

There is a baffling contradiction at the heart of the efforts of Dan Jarvis, the security minister, to explain why the prosecution of two Britons accused of spying for China collapsed last month.

- Dan Sabbagh

The problem, he insisted in front of MPs yesterday, was that “it was not the policy of a Conservative government to classify China as a threat to national security”.

Except there is plenty of evidence to suggest that China was recognised as a threat by the previous government in documents and public statements by ministers and officials. All this makes the failure of the government witness - Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser - to set this out in three separate witness statements given to the prosecution even more surprising.

The context here is the collapse of the prosecution of Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher who was working for the Conservative MP Alicia Kearns at the time of his arrest, and his friend Christopher Berry, a researcher based in China. Both were accused of spying for China under the 1911 Official Secrets Act because the alleged offences took place between late 2021 and early 2023, when that law was still in force.