For Christopher Cash it was а job he adored. The young parliamentary researcher, then in his late 20s, was a China specialist working successively for two influential backbenchers, Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns. He had a parliamentary pass and was plugged into Westminster’s gossip network during 2022, a year of Conservative turmoil in Westminster, three prime ministers and future policy uncertainty.
At the same time, Cash was in close contact with a friend, Christopher Berry, a teacher based in Hangzhou, eastern China, where the Britons had first met five years earlier. They discussed politics constantly, using an encrypted app. At one point, on 18 July, Berry allegedly told him he had met a senior Chinese Communist party leader (though he now denies meeting anybody of that rank). In a reply the next day, Cash said: “You’re in spy territory now.”
It was one of many voice notes and messages sent between the two that were recovered by the Met police’s elite SO15 unit, best known for its counter-terror work, but also responsible for investigating espionage threats to the UK.
Berry, it was alleged, had been tasked by a man known only as Alex, a Chinese spy with the Ministry of State Security working for a front. Cash was Berry’s sub-source, passing on information from Westminster to Alex, who in turn shared it with Cai Qi, a member of China’s ruling politburo.
Christopher Berry was alleged to have been in frequent and close contact with Cash. Photograph: James Veysey/Shutterstock
Cash and Berry were arrested in March 2023, accused of spying for China, and charged in April 2024. They denied the charges and have continued to assert their innocence. Last month, the case was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service, raising questions about the prosecutors’ decision and prompting a political row. Yet, little was known about the allegations once faced by the two men until Downing Street published a witness statement, as part of a wider effort by Labour to draw a line under the affair.
The statement, written by Matthew Collins, one of the UK’s deputy national security advisers, in December 2023 drew on evidence assembled by SO15. It described the two men in close and at times urgent contact: “On one occasion, for example, a total of 13 hours passed between Mr Berry receiving tasking, speaking with Mr Cash, and incorporating the information he provided in a written report back to ‘Alex’.”
On 21 July 2022, Cash was said to have told Berry that Tugendhat, a moderate China-sceptic, would “almost certainly”, in Collins’s words, become a minister under Rishi Sunak, who was then vying for the prime ministership against Liz Truss. This would be in exchange for Tugendhat’s support on foreign policy matters. The information was “very off the record” and Berry should not tell his Chinese interlocutor, Cash said. Nevertheless, the detail featured in a report Berry sent to Alex on 28 July, though in a fact not mentioned by Collins, a day later, Tugendhat endorsed Truss.
Collins’ witness statement, one of three he gave prosecutors, was published at 9.35pm on Wednesday. Those named in it were notified in advance, so that night the former researcher was able put out a response through his lawyer. Cash acknowledged he “routinely spoke and shared information” with Berry, who was “as critical of and concerned about the Chinese Communist party as I was”. It was, he added, “inconceivable to me that he would deliberately pass on any information to Chinese intelligence”.
Meanwhile, Berry said, also through his lawyer, that the reports he wrote were “provided to a Chinese company which I believed had clients wishing to develop trading links with the UK”. Those reports “contained no classified information”, Berry said, and “concerned economic and commercial issues widely discussed in the UK at the time”. They drew on information freely in the public domain, he continued, “together with political conjecture, much of which proved to be inaccurate”.
At another point, Collins claims, Berry was said to have told Alex that Kearns and Tugendhat held a “secret” meeting with Taiwanese officials from the country’s defence ministry in May 2025. They had discussed “Taiwanese strategy for a potential attack from China”, Collins said, and the report was based on information from Cash, who had sent his friend “multiple messages” describing the event “including a photo of some attendees”.
Tom Tugendhat, the security minister from 2022 to 2024, was known to advocate a tough approach to China. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
The taskings were frequent. Berry had at least 34 reports to write for Alex between December 2021 and February 2023, but he messaged his friend regularly. Yet, despite the activity, there was not a financial relationship, according to Cash. “I did not ever receive money for information which I provided,” he said this week, though at one point, in his witness statement, Collins says the researcher was offered some by Berry, if he could reply at short notice.
Alex, according to Collins, had asked in December 2022 if Berry could find out more about the level of communication between the US and UK over Xinjiang, the north-western province that is home to the country’s heavily repressed Uyghur minority, and what measures they might take against Beijing in protest. This tasking was passed “verbatim to Mr Cash with an offer of payment” Collins wrote, though “Berry did not specify an amount” and there is no suggestion any money was paid.
Berry’s final report included some intriguing information. “Berry told ‘Alex’,” Collins wrote, “that the then foreign secretary [James Cleverly] did not consider sanctions to be an effective tool in respect of the import of products from Xinjiang and similar matters.” It was unclear how this conclusion was reached, but this was at the centre of the government’s case, that “the Chinese state was given real time insights” into political information, sometimes before it became public.
In reply, Cash stated: “I have been placed in an impossible position. I have not had the daylight of a public trial to show my innocence, and I should not have to take part in a trial by media”.
Statements made by Collins, Cash said, “are completely devoid of the context that would have been given at trial”. He added: “I have lost a career I loved for an allegation against me of which I am entirely innocent.”
