Security committee says handling of China spy case was 'shambolic' in damning report

Parliament's security committee has criticised prosecutors for pulling their charges against two men accused of spying for Beijing, in a damning report which concluded the handling of the case was "shambolic".

- Eleni Courea

MPs said a process “beset by confusion and misaligned expectations” and “inadequate” communication between the government and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had contributed to the trial’s collapse, while several “opportunities to correct course were missed”.

It added: “Some aspects are best described as shambolic.”

The report concludes the committee’s six-week investigation into the collapse of the high-profile trial of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, who faced allegations of espionage. The CPS unexpectedly dropped its charges, brought under the 1911 Official Secrets Act, on 15 September and said the government had not provided sufficient evidence that China represented a “threat to the national security of the UK”.

In its report published last night, the joint committee on the national security strategy (JCNSS) said the episode had exposed “systemic failures”, fuelling “a crisis of public confidence” and “allegations of conspiracy at the highest levels of government”.

However, it found no evidence of any “coordinated high-level effort to collapse the prosecution”, dismissing claims by senior Conservatives that there had been political interference.

The JCNSS called into question prosecutors’ judgment at several stages of the processes, saying the CPS “could have surfaced or escalated issues over misaligned expectations much earlier”. The committee said: