Rishi Sunak was the only politician to see a witness statement by the deputy national security adviser at the centre of a controversy about the collapse of a case against two British men accused of spying for China.
According to letters sent to the joint committee on the national security strategy, the statement from Matthew Collins in December 2023, which was seen by the then prime minister and his advisers, did not describe China as an enemy, another key element of the case.
The letters also set out that by this point, the start of the prosecution process, both police and prosecutors were told that Collins would not call China an enemy as this was not government policy.
The case against the men, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, was dropped in September after prosecutors concluded that a conviction under the Official Secrets Act was not realistic without government evidence China posed a threat to the UK’s national security. Both Cash and Clark have consistently denied any wrongdoing.
The Conservatives have challenged Keir Starmer repeatedly about what he and his advisers knew about the case, and whether the prime minister or others intervened so as to avoid a potential row with China.
But the letters published on Friday by the joint committee, which is holding an inquiry into the affair, set out that once the formal prosecution case had begun, no politicians were involved, meaning it was only Sunak who saw Collins’ statement.
In a letter to Matt Western, the Labour MP who chairs the joint committee, Collins and Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, set out that a first draft of Collins’ witness statement was sent to Sunak’s office in December 2023, “to also be shared with No 10 special advisers”.
By this point, the letter said, a description of China as an “enemy” initially included in a draft had been removed by Collins “as it did not reflect government policy”.
This fact was passed on to police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Powell and Collins say in their letter, adding: “We understand from CTP [counter-terrorism police] that the CPS were aware of this in December 2023, which was before charges were brought.”
The letter reiterated the insistence of Starmer’s government that it had nothing to do with the collapse of the case and did not see subsequent statements requested from Collins by prosecutors, produced after the change of government.
“Following the submission of the first DNSA [deputy national security adviser] witness statement to CTP, no minister or special adviser (including the current NSA) played any role in the provision of evidence. The DNSA understood from lawyers that following the charging decision, his witness statement could not be shared,” the letter set out.
In another letter to the committee also published on Friday, the attorney general, Richard Hermer, said he had played no role in the case beyond getting a “brief update” from prosecutors in August, and being told the next month that the case was being dropped.
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“Consent [for prosecution] was given by my predecessors on 3 April 2024. Following that date, no law officer intervened in the case at any stage,” he wrote.
Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, also wrote to the committee, stressing that the political side of Starmer’s government had had nothing to do with the case.
“Following the submission of the first DNSA witness statement in December 2023, no minister or special adviser played any role in the provision of evidence,” he wrote. “The witness statements were not shared outside the Cabinet Office once finalised. The CPS advised that witness statements in criminal proceedings should not be shared prior to a witness giving evidence.”
The centrality of how China was described in whether a prosecution could happen is in part due to changed case law after Cash and Berry were charged, due to the separate trial of six Bulgarian nationals found guilty of spying for Russia. This clarified that under the Official Secrets Act a country must be a threat to the UK’s national security at the time of the offence.
Starmer and his ministers have argued that this would not have happened if the Conservatives had been speedier in replacing the Official Secrets Act, which dated from 1911. It has since been replaced with the National Security Act.
