Before we get into the political ramifications of this case, it’s worth drilling into the legal issues at play.
Christopher Cash, one of the men who was accused of spying for China, worked as a parliamentary researcher and was director of the China Research Group. He was closely linked to senior Conservative MPs then in government, including the former security minister Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns, who served as chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee.
Cash was accused of providing information to his friend Christopher Berry, a researcher based in China. Berry was himself accused of compiling reports about British politics from his conversations with Cash for a Chinese intelligence officer. The Guardian understands that the CPS suspected the ultimate recipient of these reports was Cai Qi, a member of China’s ruling politburo and one of China’s top five leaders. He is widely regarded as a protege of Xi Jinping.
Cash and Berry did not have to defend themselves in court after the case collapsed. Dan Sabbagh told me both deny all allegations and maintain their innocence. Allies of Cash said he had not passed on anything sensitive, only open-source information, political gossip or personal opinions, and that no money changed hands, nor was he blackmailed. Berry’s defence was expected to argue he believed he was writing reports for a Chinese corporate client seeking to expand its business in the UK.
“So the assumption was that this case was going to go ahead in October,” Dan said. “And then on 15 September, the CPS says we’re going to withdraw the case. This came as a complete surprise. Weeks before, witnesses to the case had been told their services would be required and then suddenly the cops ring them up and say the order to drop the case has come from the top.”
But who exactly did the police mean when they said it came “from the top”?
Why did the case collapse?
Cash and Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act, which states a person is guilty of espionage if they act in a manner “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state” and pass on information that might be “directly or indirectly useful to an enemy.”
Here is where it gets complicated. The 1911 Act was repealed and replaced by the 2023 National Security Act, which broadened the definition of espionage by replacing the term “enemy” with “foreign power.” The new legislation came into force in December 2023, while the alleged offences by Cash and Berry took place while the older Act was still in effect.
According to Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, in order to successfully charge someone under the old act, China had to be described as a threat to national security. This interpretation emerged during a separate espionage case earlier this year, in which six Bulgarian nationals were convicted of spying for Russia under the same 1911 legislation.
In that case, the court clarified that an “enemy,” for the purposes of the 1911 Act, “includes a country which represents, at the time of the offence, a threat to the national security of the UK,” says Parkinson – in a ruling handed down some weeks after Cash and Berry were charged in April 2024.
To proceed with the prosecution, the CPS needed the government to confirm that China constituted such a threat. This posed a dilemma.
“On the one hand, China is a major economic power that the government wants to trade with,” Dan said. “But China is also an authoritarian communist regime that has become more authoritarian under the current president. It sees itself in opposition to the West.”
In the end, the government’s failure to provide information led to the case collapsing.
“It’s extraordinary because the CPS is saying ‘we asked again and again for this help, but it was not forthcoming.’” said Dan. He also makes clear that, while Parkinson didn’t name, specifically, who was being asked for information, that the person giving evidence in this case ultimately answered to Number 10.
What does the government say?
Sources told the Guardian that government lawyers believed it would not have been possible to designate China as a threat to national security to accommodate the new case law, because the UK has never formally done so.
“Labour is trying to pin this on the Tories. Keir Starmer’s line as a former lawyer is that you can only prosecute people under the law as it stands, which is true,” Dan said. He told me that one of the things highlighted by this case is the prevailing national security strategy at the time.
“In 2021, China was described as a ‘systemic competitor’ under Boris Johnson. In 2023, under Rishi Sunak, it was described as an ‘epoch-defining and systemic challenge’. And even Labour’s own review in 2025 used similar language.”
Dan added that the designation has always been nuanced and never described China as a straight-up threat. “So Labour might say this was simply the policy at the time, but it is also the policy now. Which raises the question: are we effectively saying it would be impossible to prosecute anyone under this legislation, given that China has never been formally defined as an enemy?”
What happens now?
Dan told me the trial raises other tough questions. He broke them down for me, one by one.
“Question number one: when the judge in the Bulgarian case was trying to define what ‘enemy’ meant, they were not really raising the threshold. If anything, they were lowering it,” Dan explained. “A lot of lawyers went on the radio at the time saying that the bar had been lowered, not raised. But somehow the CPS interpreted it the other way round: as though the bar had been raised. They seemed to think that what had been fine at the time of charging was no longer sufficient. That is odd.”
Legal experts who spoke to Dan expressed surprise that CPS thought it needed further assurance from the government that China was an enemy insofar as it posed “a current threat to national security”, with some saying either prosecutors probably “messed up” when charging Cash and Berry in April 2024 or when they abandoned the case last month.
For the government, Dan also questioned why so many of the statements early on were vague or spoke of their disappointment with the outcome. “Because if you believe the CPS version of events, it was Downing Street itself that failed to provide the evidence required. So what is that disappointment about?”
If this trial had gone ahead, we might have learned more about China’s methods. “We would have seen more clearly what the evidence was. We would have seen more clearly what the mode of operation was alleged to be. People would have spoken about how real the threat was.”
For now, we remain in the dark.
