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The UK’s deputy national security adviser removed the word “enemy” from his original witness statement in the collapsed China spying case because it did not reflect Conservative government policy at the time.
Matthew Collins said that an original draft of his statement in December 2023 had contained the word, but he had “amended” it “to ensure factual accuracy and that it was in line with current government policy”, which he relayed to police at the time.
The comments, sent in a letter to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JNSS), which will hear evidence on the collapse of the trial next week, illustrate how government officials were resistant to calling China an “enemy” from the outset of the case.
The trial of two men accused of spying for Beijing fell apart last month when the Crown Prosecution Service said it did not have enough evidence to prosecute after the government refused to label China a national security threat.
The letter, published on Friday, comes after people with knowledge of the case told the Financial Times that the prosecution dropped the charges after realising that Collins would refuse to call China an “enemy” or national security threat in court if specifically asked.
The collapse of the case against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, two British men alleged to have spied on MPs on behalf of China, has rocked Whitehall and led to allegations that the government undermined the case to preserve its economic relationship with Beijing.
Both Cash and Berry have always denied the claims and were formally acquitted after the CPS said it could not take the case forward.
If the CPS had known Collins would not be willing to use the language required at trial before the men were charged, then the prosecution might never have gone ahead, people with knowledge of the situation told the FT.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has denied his government intervened in the case and said it was the policy of the previous Conservative administration, in power at the time of the alleged offences, not to define China as an enemy that led to the case’s collapse.
The letters to the JNSS cast new light on the timeline of events leading up to the case’s collapse on September 15.
Several senior unelected government officials were informed by the director of public prosecutions, the head of the CPS, that the case was at risk of being dropped almost two weeks before it was made public.
The letters claim the officials — including Collins, attorney-general Lord Richard Hermer, and cabinet secretary Sir Chris Wormald — were all told by the DPP that the CPS would not be putting forward evidence “subject to confirmation” on September 3.
Collins and Wormald were told they could share the threat to the case with national security adviser Jonathan Powell and Sir Olly Robbins, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office.
But they were told by the DPP, the letters claim, that they could not share this information with government ministers. “The DPP made clear that this fact must not be briefed any further at that stage,” Collins said in a joint letter with Powell to the JNSS.
Starmer has said he found out only two days before the case’s collapse was made public.
Hermer said the instruction not to share the risk to the case was “at the express request of the DPP” and that there was “nothing unusual” about law officers being asked to keep information confidential “even from senior colleagues”.
But the new timeline may raise questions as to whether Starmer, himself a former DPP, or other ministers could have made efforts to ask why the evidence was not deemed sufficient, if they had been informed earlier.
The government has said ministers were not involved in the preparation of the witness statements.
Three witness statements by Collins, two of which were prepared in the past year since Labour came to power, were released last week, showing that he described several threats China posed to the UK but stopped short of calling it an “enemy”.
The CPS has said it believed in 2023 it had enough evidence to prosecute, but asked Collins in the past year for additional evidence to illustrate China was a “national security threat”.
The CPS and police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
