Top legal experts question why CPS dropped China 'spies' charges

Legal experts have questioned the explanation given by the Crown Prosecution Service for its sudden decision to drop charges against two Britons accused of spying for China, amid a political row over who was responsible.

- Dan Sabbagh

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The expert lawyers expressed surprise that the CPS thought it needed further assurance from the government that China was an enemy insofar as it posed “a current threat to national security” before the trial of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry could go ahead.

The former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald said in a BBC interview that he believed Stephen Parkinson, the current DPP, may have been “over-fussy” in demanding the government “make a statement in open court that would be embarrassing in some ways to British national interests”.

Nick Vamos, a former lawyer at the CPS and partner at Peter and Peters, said he believed prosecutors had probably “messed up” either when charging Cash and Berry in April 2024 or when they abandoned the case last month. “I cannot fathom what about this case has changed,” he said.