(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 174 / Noes: 327 - Question accordingly negatived.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has not selected the proposed amendment. I call the shadow Minister.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House calls on the Government to release the minutes of the meeting chaired by the National Security Adviser on 1 September 2025, at which the prosecution of the two alleged Chinese spies, since dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service, was discussed, including all actions arising from that meeting; and further calls on the Government to publish the minutes of all other meetings where the case was discussed, whether by officials or with Ministers, all relevant correspondence between the Crown Prosecution Service and the Government and between Departments, including correspondence between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Cabinet Office, Attorney General’s Office, and the Treasury, and advice provided to the Prime Minister relating to the China spy case.
The purpose of this Opposition day debate and of our motion is very simple: transparency—that is all that we ask for. The basic facts are that two men were arrested on suspicion of having spied on hon. Members of this House for China, and the Director of Public Prosecutions has acknowledged that this appears to have been a “gross breach of trust” against hon. Members, yet the case against the two men collapsed because, in the words of the senior Treasury counsel, Tom Little KC, the case was “effectively unsustainable”; it was brought to “a crashing halt” because the Government’s own witness, the deputy National Security Adviser, refused to provide the fatal piece of evidence.
Mr Little had what he called a million-dollar question: was China an active threat to national security? The deputy National Security Adviser repeatedly refused to say yes. The Government effectively refused to say what was patently apparent to anyone remotely alive to the facts of the case. This House has every reason to be told why they refused, and why, for example, the Prime Minister did not intervene to prevent the case collapsing, when we know he was warned that it was unlikely to proceed. It is also reported that the Home Secretary tried to intervene.
We do not call for the publication of this material lightly. We know it is an extraordinary measure to call for the Government to publish documents relating to the formation of policy, but this is an extraordinary event. We have reached this point because the Government have been unable or unwilling to answer basic questions about what they knew when, and why they acted as they did. They have hidden behind civil servants and advisers, when it is Ministers who are supposed to make decisions, and in doing so, they have brought the actions and decisions of those advisers and officials into the spotlight in a way that is most irregular.
Just as worryingly, there has been a persistent inaccuracy and inconsistency in the Government’s statements, to the point where this House can no longer trust a word of theirs. There are a number of examples. First, on 13 October, the Security Minister denied in this House that the mega-mandarin meeting on 1 September, which is the subject of our motion, took place. Last week, the Solicitor General admitted that the meeting did take place. We now know that it was led by the National Security Adviser and attended by the Cabinet Secretary, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, senior representation from the Home Office and the Attorney General’s office, and the chief of MI5, but we still do not know what was said there, what was agreed or why the Government tried to deny its existence.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I was interested to see that the National Security Adviser was listed as being involved in that meeting. The National Security Adviser is a political appointee—he is a special adviser—and that is usually the reason why the deputy National Security Adviser is put forward to take all the flak. If the NSA himself is participating in policy meetings about this matter, why does he not come forward? Why is he sheltering behind a full-time official who is being hung out to dry?
Alex Burghart
My right hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point and is personally very experienced in such things. It has been reported that the National Security Adviser chaired that meeting. That is to say that he was taking a very active role in what was going on. That is why it is incredibly important that the Government come clean with us about what happened in that meeting, who attended and what was decided there.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
The National Security Adviser has spent a great deal of time visiting various Chinese entities before and after his appointment. One appointment that he does not appear very keen on taking up is with the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, which has requested—quite legitimately, under the Osmotherly rules—that he appears before it, but Ministers appear to be blocking that. Why does my hon. Friend think that is?
Alex Burghart
My right hon. Friend is right: the National Security Adviser showed a great reluctance to attend. I understand that he has now agreed to attend, although the report I read said that he was going to attend in camera. If that report is correct—the Minister has the opportunity to say it is not true—I am not sure that that is the best level of transparency that this House might expect.
The second instance of inconsistency and inaccuracy that we draw attention to is from 7 October, when the Prime Minister told journalists that what mattered in this case was the designation of China as it had been in 2023, when the offences were alleged to have occurred. However, last week, on 24 October, the Director of Public Prosecutions said that that was categorically not the case. He said:
“The test was…positively not what the then Government was prepared to, or did, say in public about China…but rather whether China was—as a matter of fact—an active threat to national security.”
This is a most important point, and one that was revisited yesterday. There is a very serious question about why the deputy National Security Adviser believed that he would
“need to be in line with government policy at the time”,
when the Crown Prosecution Service said that it did not need to know about policy, but about the facts. The Minister should explain to the House why the deputy National Security Adviser chose to ignore the CPS in this case. He should also tell us whether he thinks the deputy National Security Adviser complied with civil procedure rule 35, which requires him to assist the court and overrides any other obligation.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can clarify what is happening here. Is the issue that the Government thought that China was a threat to national security but did not declare it, or that they declared it but China was not a threat? I am quite confused about the point he is making.
Alex Burghart
The hon. Gentleman will have a perfectly good opportunity to question the people responsible in a few moments’ time. The point is that the Government have been unclear, inconsistent and inaccurate, and we are giving them an opportunity to clear this up right now.
Alex Burghart
The previous Government were clear on a number of occasions that China was a threat, but if the hon. Gentleman had been listening to what I just said, he would have heard that the Director of Public Prosecutions said last week that it was categorically not a question of what the last Government said. Now that I have the hon. Gentleman’s attention, I will repeat for his benefit what the DPP said: that the question was
“whether China was—as a matter of fact—an active threat to national security.”
It was not a question of policy; it was a matter of fact. [Interruption.] I am not going to go through it a third time.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for setting out the story so far, but given that there have been so many variations on the truth, can he come up with an explanation of why the Government cannot alight on a single version of the truth of this matter?
Alex Burghart
I think there are basically two possible answers to my hon. Friend’s question. The first is that the Government cannot tell their elbow from their posterior; the second is that they do not want this House to know the truth. Either way, on a matter as serious as this, it is incredibly important that we get to the truth. Tonight’s motion presents the Government with an opportunity to be entirely transparent with us and set out the facts of the case as they were at the time—particularly on 1 October, when this all-important meeting took place.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I just want to clear up one small point. When the CPS originally decided to prosecute back in 2024, it was convinced on the basis of the then-required evidence that was in front of it that in this case, China was responsible, and therefore it posed a threat. What changed was the Roussev case, which redefined what the CPS needed to be able to say in order to go ahead with any further prosecution. It was made clear that all that needed to be done was to make the clear point that China was a persistent, continuous threat to the UK’s strategic interests. The reason why the CPS needed to make that statement had nothing to do with what had happened before; it was all about what resulted from the Roussev case. That was the key.
Alex Burghart
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct, and the Director of Public Prosecutions has been very clear and consistent on that point.
Alex Burghart
I will give way one more time, and then I will make some progress.
James Wild
The first senior Treasury counsel, Tom Little, yesterday said that he took the extraordinary step of having a direct discussion with the deputy National Security Adviser because he could not understand why what he said was a relatively straightforward piece of evidence—namely, that China was an active and ongoing threat—had not been provided. Why did the Government not provide that commitment?
Alex Burghart
That is the million-dollar question. Why were the Government not prepared to say something that was manifestly evidentially true to all and sundry?
The third example is that on 15 October, the Prime Minister said that the deputy National Security Adviser acted entirely independently, without consultation with Ministers or special advisers, and without political involvement. However, the CPS has now made it clear that there were multiple discussions about what the DNSA would and would not say, starting with one such discussion on 3 July 2025. Moreover, the DNSA’s first witness statement was sighted by
“the then National Security Adviser and the…Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary”,
and
“sent to the…Prime Minister through No.10 private office”,
including special advisers.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
Is it therefore not incredible either way that the deputy NSA did not discuss the biggest spy case this century with his boss, the National Security Adviser, and was left to his own devices to provide the evidence?
Alex Burghart
I think we all find it difficult to believe that the deputy National Security Adviser was left entirely to his own devices.
A fourth example is that on 20 October, the Minister for Security, who is in his place, told the House:
“Final evidence went in in August, and I can give the hon. Gentleman an assurance that there is nothing the Prime Minister or any Minister could have done thereafter.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2025; Vol. 773, c. 640.]
We now know that there were meetings between the CPS and the Government on 3 and 9 September to attempt to rescue the case. Why did the Security Minister tell the House something that was not correct?
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
As far as I can remember, the Attorney General told the House of Lords yesterday that 3 September was when he was informed that there were evidential difficulties with the case. The key point is that he had no power to intervene, because of the memorandum between the Attorney General’s Office and the CPS. The Attorney General does not get involved in evidential sufficiency.
Alex Burghart
Ministers do get involved; it is their job to be involved. Ministers represent the Government. Ministers represent all of us. It is not good enough for the Government to say that they are entirely powerless in this instance—they are not.
A fifth example is that yesterday, the Cabinet Secretary said that he did not believe that the chief of MI5 had described China as a threat. On 16 October 2025, Ken McCallum said:
“Do Chinese state actors present a UK national security threat? And the answer is, of course, yes they do every day.”
How on earth did the Cabinet Secretary not know that? This issue is of paramount importance. There are many other such examples.
The Government have an opportunity to be clear with us today, not just about the meetings and the dealings of the past six months, but on their position as it stands. Will the Minister tell us what the material difference is between “a range of threats” and “an active security threat”? The deputy National Security Adviser was keen to make that point yesterday. Perhaps most importantly of all, do the Government believe that China is an active security threat? If not, what would it take to cross that threshold? It is time for the Government to publish all the details so that we can see what really happened here.
I know that the Government will protest their innocence and claim that it is all the fault of the CPS, or the last Government, or the legislation, just as they have tried to do for weeks, but such pleas and protests are no good reason for them to refuse to publish the material we are requesting today. This House may have been spied upon. This House has a right to straight answers. This House has a right to see under the bonnet when the safety and privacy of its Members may have been compromised. This House has a right to know the Government’s real position and the Government’s real agenda. If this Government have nothing to hide, they should hide nothing from this House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Before I call the Minister, I remind Members that this debate has to conclude by 7 pm. It is heavily subscribed, so I urge them to be as brief as possible.
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)
I will do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart). First, I want to reinforce, not just as a Minister, but as a parliamentarian, the Government’s deep regret about the collapse of the criminal case concerning the two individuals charged under the Official Secrets Act 1911. Everyone in the Government was hoping that the trial would go ahead and planning on the basis that it would.
As a reminder, following the arrests of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry in March 2023 as part of a counter-espionage operation, counter-terrorism police requested that the deputy National Security Adviser act as a witness in the case. [Interruption.] Let me go through this, because it is important to the challenges made by the hon. Gentleman. The DNSA made it clear that he would provide evidence on the basis of the Government’s position at the time of the offences, and that is crucial to the judgment that has been made in this case. The first statement was drafted—
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I will make some progress, and then I will give way to the shadow Home Secretary.
The first statement was drafted between August and December 2023. During that time, Counter Terrorism Policing was updated on progress, including the information that the deputy National Security Adviser would not be able to call China an enemy, as that was not the position of the Government at the time of the offences.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Okay, I will let the shadow Home Secretary intervene on that point.
Chris Philp
The Minister has said twice in the last minute that the question was the policy of the last Government. Let me take him to page 4 of the letter from the Director of Public Prosecutions, dated Thursday of last week. In that letter, the DPP said—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Interventions should be short.
Chris Philp
The DPP said the opposite of what the Minister has said. He said that the issue was a question of fact, and not—categorically not—the policy of the last Government.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! The right hon. Gentleman has just quoted page 4 of the DPP’s letter. Let me quote page 5 to him:
“The information that we required related to the period between 31 December 2021 and 3 February 2023. The position of the current Government was not relevant to the case.”
I suggest that the shadow Home Secretary look at the next page.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
No, it is not misleading. Will the right hon. Gentleman give me a moment? It was the position at the relevant time. What is even worse, however, is that the word “enemy” was not the position at the time. It came out of the statement, and that happened under the previous Government, I am afraid.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I took interventions from the shadow Home Secretary, and I must now make some progress.
Before finalising his statement in December 2023, the deputy National Security Adviser sighted the then National Security Adviser and the then Cabinet Office permanent secretary. On 18 December—this was all under the previous Government—the permanent secretary came back with three comments for the DNSA to consider. The DNSA then finalised the statement, and his private office sent a final version of the draft to the then Prime Minister through the No. 10 private office and No. 10 special advisers. Once the statements were submitted they were not shared, and in April 2024, formal charges were laid. That was the position under the previous Government.
Two supplementary witness statements from the DNSA were submitted in February and August 2025, following requests from Counter Terrorism Policing for further detail on the nature and extent of the threat to the UK from China. For the second statement, CTP specifically asked the DNSA to comment on whether China as a state, during the period from 31 December 2021 to 3 February 2023, posed an active threat; and whether that remained the case. For the third statement, CTP requested that the DNSA provide further points of detail regarding the UK Government’s assessment of the nature and extent of the threat, with examples. The DNSA faithfully and with full integrity—I noted that the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster implied that somehow he was not compliant with part 35 of the civil procedure rules—set out the various threats posed by the Chinese state in line with the UK Government’s position at the material time, in order to try to support a successful prosecution. We then come, obviously, to the meeting on 1 September to which the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster referred, and with which I shall deal in a moment.
I was fascinated by the opening speech of the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in which he talked of the “clarity” of the last Government’s position.
“The government’s approach to China is guided by three pillars: strengthening our national security protections, aligning and cooperating with our partners, and engaging where it is consistent with our interest.”
Who said that? The shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster did in 2023, and here he is now trying to talk about the clarity of the position in 2023.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Not for a moment.
On 1 September, the National Security Adviser convened a routine meeting to discuss the UK’s relationship with China in the context of this case and several other upcoming moments. That is entirely what we would expect the National Security Adviser to do. We have learned that entirely separately, and entirely independent of Government, the CPS was deliberating on not offering evidence in this case. On 3 September, the DPP told the Cabinet Secretary and the DNSA of his intention, subject to confirmation, not to put forward evidence, and unfortunately that decision was confirmed on 9 September. I must say to the Opposition that that is a matter of regret. It is quite rightly an independent decision, but it is a matter of regret. On 15 September 2025, the CPS officially confirmed the decision to discontinue the case against Cash and Berry.
I actually welcome scrutiny of that decision. That is why I welcome the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy’s inquiry into espionage cases and the Official Secrets Act and the Intelligence and Security Committee’s investigations into how classified intelligence was used. Since we last discussed the matter in this House, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, the Attorney General, the Cabinet Secretary, the National Security Adviser and the deputy National Security Adviser have all submitted evidence to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.
Yesterday, the Joint Committee heard evidence from the Director of Public Prosecutions and the First Treasury Counsel, and from the Cabinet Secretary and the deputy National Security Adviser at a later session. Tomorrow, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister and the Attorney General will give more evidence. A question has been raised about the National Security Adviser; he will also be giving evidence soon, and certainly before the end of the year.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
The Minister expresses deep regret that this case has not gone to trial. I want to believe him on that, but the case did not go to trial. With the power of hindsight, if he was to go back and do this all again, what would the Minister have done differently to ensure that this case did go to trial?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I will tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what would have made a massive difference: if we could have updated the Official Secrets Act far sooner than 2023. That would have made a material difference. This case was being prosecuted under a 1911 Act. The National Security Act was passed in 2023. If only the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had been in the Cabinet Office to be close to what was going on; perhaps the legislation could have been changed at an earlier stage and we would not be in this position.
Let me be clear with the House: the allegations of political interference in this case are absolutely baseless. The CPS decision to discontinue the case was independent of Government. Indeed, the Opposition should ask what the Director of Public Prosecutions himself said about that; he reiterated it again yesterday when he gave evidence, sitting alongside Tom Little KC.
Sir Julian Lewis
Can the Minister explain to the House, once and for all, how it is possible for a Government to believe that China is responsible for posing a wide range of threats, but is not a threat itself? He would clear matters up, and allay suspicions that the Government are holding back for economic reasons, if he would simply say that China is a threat to our national security. Will he say that?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
China poses a multiplicity of threats; it poses a threat in terms of espionage, in terms of cyber, and in terms of economic security. However, with the greatest respect to the right hon. Gentleman, the issue is whether it was considered a threat at the material time, and I cannot go back and change that.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
I am listening carefully to what the Minister is saying, but can we be informed how MPs today are to be further protected from foreign intelligence services?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is 100% correct, and that is a huge priority for the Government; it is a very serious issue. As I said when I opened this debate, it is not just about the position of the Government; I say as a parliamentarian that we in this place have to be protected from foreign interference.
The shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster asked about the meeting on 1 September. We heard about that yesterday from the Cabinet Secretary and the deputy National Security Adviser, who both attended that meeting: it was a discussion about the bilateral relationship between the UK and China in the context of the case. The Cabinet Secretary made it clear yesterday that the meeting was entirely appropriate; no discussion of evidence took place, and everyone involved was participating on the assumption that the case was going to go ahead.
It was only on 3 September—as was confirmed by him in his evidence to the JCNSS yesterday—that the Director of Public Prosecutions informed the Cabinet Secretary and the DNSA of his intention, subject to confirmation, that the CPS would not be putting forward evidence at trial. The Attorney General was informed on the same day.
It is important that I finish this point, because I have been challenged on the chronology and I am only too delighted to enlighten the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The DPP confirmed to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy that the position was agreed after a period of internal decision making within the CPS in the run-up to the meeting on 3 September. At that meeting, the DPP made it clear that the facts must not be briefed out further, with the exception of informing the NSA and the permanent secretary at the FCDO. The Cabinet Secretary and the DNSA therefore did not inform anyone else until shortly before the case became public. On 9 September, the CPS confirmed the decision to offer no evidence to the DNSA. That is the chronology.
Let me now directly address what the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said, because I am conscious of the time. There is already an established mechanism for Parliament to address this issue. The Government are fully co-operating with the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy inquiry and the ISC, and will provide evidence and appear before the Committee in the usual way.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
In one moment.
In the motion, the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is seeking a wide range of documents. He was a Cabinet Office Minister himself, and he knows the sensitivity of those documents. He knows the legal professional privilege—
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I will give the hon. Gentleman one more chance before I conclude. I say to him that highly classified material is subject to legal professional privilege and includes advice to the Prime Minister, which successive Governments have not released to the public. Why? Because it is in our interests to protect such material. The hon. Gentleman knows that in his heart of hearts.
Alex Burghart
I have always admired the shine on the Minister’s brass neck, and never so much as at this moment. I remember the Brexit debates, when he and many of the other gentlemen and ladies on the Labour Benches overrode legal privilege and asked for classified documents week after week. Members of this House may have been spied on, and the Government have a duty to be transparent. They cannot hide behind anything, given that they have previously asked for similar documents. Make them available!
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I am looking at the hon. Gentleman and remembering the debates we had. Let me tell him the difference between what I was doing then and what is happening now. First, I was applying at the time, via a Humble Address mechanism, for a single document. By the way, his rather shambolic motion, which seems to be a fishing expedition, is totally imprecise. Secondly, that was not security material at this level, which is in our national interest.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Yes, I did.
Let me emphasise that I support parliamentary scrutiny. I support and welcome the ongoing process with the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. I support the Government’s continuing to engage with the ISC. What we will not do, though, is accede to the hon. Gentleman’s demand. He knows in his heart of hearts that it would be totally inappropriate for the long list of material he has stuck in the motion to be put in the public domain. Asking for open publication is completely different from the appropriate parliamentary scrutiny which, quite rightly, will go on.
Let me conclude by saying this. The Government and I are gravely disappointed that the trial did not proceed. In response to the point that was put to me by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), the DNSA’s evidence articulated clearly the range of threats that China posed to the UK’s national security and, indeed, our economic security at the material time. In the light of the threats that have been identified—I agree with the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster—this is a very grave matter. The Government are resolute in our determination to work across all parties and in partnership with the parliamentary security authorities, as was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), to ensure that espionage and interference by China or any other country is not successful in the UK.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We have just 90 minutes, and over 20 colleagues wish to contribute. The last speech was definitely not short. Hopefully, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson can show us how it is done.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
We congratulate the Conservatives on bringing forward this debate. Given recent news headlines about their own weaknesses on this issue, doing so is what Sir Humphrey would describe as a “courageous decision”. As the third party spokesperson, I feel obliged to play the role of a marriage counsellor. It is my duty to urge both sides—the Government and the official Opposition—to concede that they have made mistakes and to bring them together in the hope of finding common ground.
The Government and the official Opposition truly have more common ground on this issue than they would like to admit. The common ground is clear in the DNSA’s evidence statements, and it has become clearer as this sorry saga has dragged on. It became clearer still in yesterday’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy that there is barely a cigarette paper between the position of the Conservative party when it was in government and the Labour Government today. The Conservative party will not admit that, because all it wants to do is pretend that the Government are entirely to blame, which is a laudable aim for any Opposition party. The Labour party cannot admit it, because it cannot publicly concede that its position on a matter central to our national security interests is the same as that of the Conservative Government they replaced last summer. It falls to us Liberal Democrats to speak the uncomfortable parts of the truth and tell it like it is, because nobody else is willing or able to do so.
While some of their brave Back Benchers spoke out when the Conservatives were in government, the machinery of the Government were keen to take an approach on China that was far from hawkish. At the heart of this issue is the often unspoken suggestion that we must take a nuanced position on China because our economy is now vulnerable to international threats. The truth is that Conservatives and their allies aligned to the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) cut us adrift from the EU, and they have left Britain more exposed to economic pressure from hostile states than we should be.
We find ourselves in a position where the Government cannot bring themselves to describe as a national security threat a nation whose spies hacked the data of 40 million British voters held by the Electoral Commission. The Government cannot bring themselves to describe as a national security threat a nation that has agreed a “no limits” partnership with Putin, despite Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Just 10 days ago, Beijing was publicly bullying the Government into granting permission for the new Chinese embassy at Tower Bridge, warning of “consequences” if the Government did not approve the plans. Is our weak international trading position, caused by the disastrous Brexit given to us by Conservative and Reform Members, influencing the Government’s decision making on the new embassy? It would seem foolish to argue otherwise.
I would draw a comparison between that and the Government’s position on Russia, which has been listed on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme. Given the “no limits” relationship between Beijing and Moscow, it is odd that Russia is listed while China is not. If the Government really wanted to strengthen the case for prosecution, perhaps placing China on the enhanced tier would have aided the prosecution, even absent the word “enemy”. The fact that the word “enemy” appeared on the original draft witness statement but was later removed again raises concerns about what was happening during the tenure of the previous Conservative Government. The public deserve clear answers not just from those on the Government Front Bench, but from those on the official Opposition’s Front Bench. Did the DNSA meet Ministers between the initial draft and the final version of the witness statement?
This House owes a debt of gratitude to the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) and the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), both of whom have shown a great deal of bravery in the very best traditions of British public service. The DNSA’s witness statement referenced “backchannels” used to dissuade those two Members from criticising Confucius institutes in the UK. The Security Minister assured me that he was happy to speak with the Members in question last week about this very point. Has that meeting now taken place, and will the Minister let us know from the Dispatch Box what this Government’s understanding of the word “backchannel” is in that context? Does the word “backchannel” refer to the previous Government’s Whips, officials or others? The public deserve to know which element of the British state was attempting to prevent brave MPs from asking questions. If the Minister cannot let us know, perhaps someone on the Conservative Front Bench or anywhere else on the official Opposition Benches could clarify that for the House.
Finally, I turn to the involvement of the CPS in the collapse of this trial. The Government are adamant that the failure to designate China as an “enemy” is central to the failure to prosecute. I have already addressed the question of how that word was removed from the initial witness statement during the tenure of the previous Government, but I want to draw the House’s attention to the Roussev case, which was referenced earlier, that was being prosecuted at the same time. In that instance, the judge stated that
“any state which presently poses an active threat to the UK’s national security can properly be described as ‘an enemy’ in ordinary language.”
The outcome of that case was the conviction of six Bulgarian nationals last July for operating as part of a Russian espionage network. The CPS has serious questions to answer about why the China case fell apart when the term “enemy” was not an issue for the Roussev case as recently as last July.
Transparency and independence in national security decisions are an essential part of maintaining public trust. This case has thrown that trust into serious jeopardy at a time when the embassy planning application is already undermining the nation’s confidence in the Government’s approach to relations with China. Neither the Government nor the official Opposition have provided clarity. The public could be forgiven for thinking that both sides are ducking responsibility. The Liberal Democrats believe that we need a statutory public inquiry to get to the bottom of what went wrong and how influence over China policy caused the collapse of this case.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call John Slinger, who I believe has a very considerate three-minute speech.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
I will do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Conservative Members are being nothing short of opportunistic and are playing political games with our national security. It is, of course, their job and their right to oppose what the Government are doing, but on issues of national security I would have thought there could be more appreciation of the national interest and the nuances involved.
In my speech I am going to do some myth-busting—quite a useful thing to do in this age of misinformation, disinformation and hyperbolic chest-thumping. What we are seeing is a somewhat phoney, but very definitely opportunistic, brand of national security patriotism. Frankly, if ever over-inflated balloons of confected outrage needed to be burst, it is today. So, I will bust two myths and state two truisms.
Myth No. 1: a narrative that the Tories try to push is that Labour prioritised a strategic relationship with communist China. However, the Government fully recognise that China poses a series of threats to UK national security, from cyber-attacks to foreign interference and espionage targeting our democratic institutions. The true fault lies with the previous Government. The right hon. Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), the then Foreign Secretary, said in April 2023 that summing up China in one word as a “threat” was
“impossible, impractical and—most importantly—unwise”.
The Leader of the Opposition, while serving in the Cabinet, also said:
“We certainly should not be describing China as a foe”.
Now that this trial has collapsed, they are accusing this Government of interfering, when it was their carefully worded Government policy that did not define China as an “enemy”—and there is nothing that present Ministers can do to change that.
Gregory Stafford
I would urge the hon. Gentleman not to misquote the two right hon. Members that he has just quoted. Even if the quotes that he gave were whole and full—which they are not—the DPP has categorically said that it was not about policy; it was about whether China was an actual threat at the time. Is the DPP right, or does the hon. Gentleman have some other information?
John Slinger
I do not have any other information on that point, but I do believe that Conservative Members ought to look in the mirror and acknowledge the decisions taken by the previous Government. Let me turn to myth No.2—
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
On that point, it is really important to clarify why such tight definitions were important in the first place. That is because the case was brought under a 1911 Act of Parliament, not a modern, up-to-date Act of Parliament. Is that not why we are in this situation?
John Slinger
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is absolutely, deeply regrettable that the Conservative party, when in government, did not reform legislation sufficiently well.
Myth No. 2, another myth that the Tories will continue to spread, is that the Labour Government interfered with the delivering of evidence. The shadow Home Secretary has made the accusation that
“the government chose to deliberately submit inadequate evidence that led to two alleged spies getting off scot-free.”
This accusation simply has no real substance, as the Prime Minister has confirmed that no Labour Ministers or special advisers were involved with the provision of evidence for this case.
I shall move on to what I believe all Members across this House know to be true—truism No. 1. It is dangerous to undermine public confidence in the Government on matters of national security for party political advantage. Truism No. 2 is the more important one. It is perfectly possible to hold two thoughts in your mind at the same time: one is that China is clearly a strategic rival to the UK in certain areas, and another is that it is a vital partner, whether on the Security Council, in tackling global challenges or, of course, for trade and investment.
I will conclude, taking the advice of Madam Deputy Speaker, by saying that the Conservatives really do need to look in the mirror on this issue. This Government are acting with integrity.
Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and Tavistock) (Con)
This has been an interesting experience, almost revisiting ancient times with the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) leading for the Government on this debate. While I have a great deal of sympathy with his position, I cannot sympathise with his rather bland, anodyne account of the events to date. What is clear, and it is an apophthegm often imbibed with one’s mother’s milk, is that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, sounds like a duck, looks like a duck, it is almost certainly a duck.
The problem in this case is that the Government were never prepared to describe that animal as a duck. They must have known from a very early period; indeed, the first senior Treasury counsel said yesterday that, even in August, he had made the point abundantly plain to the Government that unless they reconsidered their approach and described the blasted animal as a duck, the case would go down the pan. There was nothing to prevent the Government, through their expert witness, from saying, “In our view, China was a national security threat in 2021”—nothing at all to prevent that.
Sir Geoffrey Cox
No, I will not—too short of time.
There was nothing to prevent that because it was a question of fact. The fact is that the Government were not prepared to change their approach. It is a perfectly legitimate point for the right hon. Member for Torfaen to say to me, “Back in 2021, the policy of the Government was not to describe China as an enemy,” but at that time, we had not had the spying, the intimidation, and the direct targeting of this institution and the democratic assembly of our people that we have now seen by 2025. Things have moved on, and it was incumbent upon the Government to reconsider their approach, which was that they would not describe a duck as a duck. The witness was prepared to say, “It has webbed feet, it swims, it quacks, it has a bill—but we are not prepared to call it a duck.”
Are you telling me, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the right hon. Gentleman can look this House in the eye and say that nobody raised this problem inside No. 10 and said, “We have a policy problem. It is a roadblock to this case. What are we going to do about it?”? Is he saying that that was never discussed with the National Security Adviser, that the DNSA never raised that with any relevant Minister? The Attorney General, when he met on 3 September, said, “Well, I couldn’t intervene on matters of sufficiency of evidence.” That is perfectly true; he cannot intervene, but he could challenge. He could say, “What do you need? Is there anything I can do by way of intercession with ministries to ensure that you get the evidence that you require?” But nothing was said. Nothing was said on 3 September because “nothing” was the policy of the Government. It was to wait while this case slid down the slope straight into the pan where no doubt many of the, not inaptly named, mandarins of Whitehall were perfectly content to see it slide.
There is extraordinary cheek in the right hon. Gentleman, who came to this House four or five years ago with his Humble Address when he asked for legal advice—advice on the most sensitive negotiating matters that this country was engaged in with the Berlaymont—to be disclosed for all to see, now saying that we should not see the truth of what in reality the Government were saying and doing at the time.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it is almost certainly a duck, and when I apply it to what the right hon. Gentleman says, it is almost certainly a complete crock of old—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Follow that, Paul Waugh. I am told that you have four minutes.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
First, I want to put on the record my anger and frustration, shared by many in this House, at the collapse of this case, particularly the dropping of the spying charges against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry and the resulting collapse of their trial, which had been due to go ahead this very month.
Secondly, I welcome Mr Speaker’s guidance on how to improve Members’ security. Members must not forget that we have a personal responsibility too to protect ourselves, our fellow Members and our staff from such foreign interference, which includes in our hiring practices and vetting of staff who can work in this building, which has not been often mentioned in this debate.
However, I want mainly to warn of the danger of some of the rhetoric that has been used to date in this case. Of course, it is the job of His Majesty’s Opposition to probe, challenge and scrutinise the Government, yet what has happened in this case goes way beyond that and risks harming us all, just as spying on our Parliament harms us all. I am talking about the repeated unsubstantiated and scurrilous suggestions that any Minister or special adviser in this Government interfered or intervened in the independent decision making of the CPS.
In an article in The Times on 15 October, the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), accused the Government of deliberately choosing to collapse the case:
“It is clear the government chose to deliberately submit inadequate evidence that led to two alleged spies getting off scot-free.”
He went on:
“They must now also explain who was guiding Matt Collins in preparing this evidence.”
That is an appalling accusation to make with zero evidence and an insult to the professional integrity of the deputy National Security Adviser, and I hope the shadow Home Secretary withdraws it. Sadly, he was not alone. On 13 October, the Leader of the Opposition told the BBC:
“This looks like a deliberate decision to collapse the case and curry favour with the regime in China.”
She went on to say that she suspected that Ministers
“have decided that closer economic ties with China were more important than due process and our national security.”
Just look at those words: “looks like” and “suspect”. There is not a shred of evidence, only insinuation. That is not the language of a Prime Minister in waiting.
As the Security Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), has made clear, it was an entirely independent decision by the CPS to discontinue the case, and the CPS has confirmed that it came under no outside pressure to do so. As for the Whitehall meeting on 1 September referenced by the Opposition in their motion, crucially, Mr Collins said yesterday that there had been
“at least four lawyers in the room who ensured that there was no discussion about the evidence”
in the case.
This House has maintained a proud cross-party consensus on Ukraine, helping President Zelensky to stand up to Putin—a consensus that is, sadly, not helped at times by Reform, whose Putin apologists are indeed Moscow’s useful idiots of the 21st century. We need to maintain a similar cross-party consensus in fighting against Chinese threats.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is making a good case about cross-party consideration of the threats China poses. I want to ask a very simple question, which I have asked in this place before: does he think that China should be on the foreign influence registration scheme, as Russia is—yes or no?
Paul Waugh
That is a matter for Ministers to decide; I am not privy to all the information that would be required to make that determination.
It is vital for our own national security and is in our national interests that we maintain a similar consensus as we have on Ukraine on the threats, challenges and opportunities posed by China. We should all stand firm in this House on issues of national security and human rights and on the threats China poses clearly to our economy, our industrial secrets, our intellectual property, our democracy and, yes, our cyber-space. We should also recognise that it is important that the UK engages with China where it is in our hard-headed national interest—and mutual interest—to do so, from climate change to global health and trade.
That is why the Opposition in government had a policy of protect, align and engage—there is that word “engage” again. How different is that really from our own compete, challenge and co-operate? I know that this place often thrives on political knockabout, with parties trying to seize on opponents’ perceived weakness, but in accusing one’s political opponents of somehow being enemies of the people and plotting non-existent cover-ups, the only beneficiaries are our real enemies abroad.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I come to Sir Iain Duncan Smith, after which Back-Bench Members will have a speaking limit of four minutes.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
It is a particular pleasure that you should be in the Chair for this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, because like me and the others, some of whom have been named, you are sanctioned by a brutal Chinese Government. I think it is excellent that you are here to invigilate this debate and to keep us on track—forgive me if I go over. [Laughter.]
I am not going to take the blandishments of the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger) who told us to look in the mirror. I stopped looking in the mirror a long, long time ago. In fact, when I was elected in 1992 I was told by a journalist at the Express that I could look in the mirror and see my career behind me. I feel like I have been walking backwards ever since.
Can I just say, I think the whole principle that underlies all this is the Government’s behaviour over this decision? I will come to the decision in a second, but I want to address how the Government dealt with the decision—and how they have publicly dealt with it, which is really rather peculiar. It has been almost impossible throughout this to drag information out of the Government about why the DNSA took the decisions he took, where the Government were in this and when meetings took place. Denials slid towards acceptances that dates were in fact as they stood. As I understand it, it was even exclaimed by the Prime Minister that The Sunday Times was lying when it raised the idea of there being a meeting on 1 September containing all the various individuals, including the DNSA.
It has been a sort of meticulous nonsense. Dodge, duck, dive, dip, and dodge—the five Ds of dodgeball, or in this case the five Ds of dodge the spying case. Getting to the truth of this has been painful, and if it is painful for the Government, they have only themselves to blame. Had they come out straightaway at the beginning and been clear about all this, instead of hiding behind the DNSA, they might have found it easier.
I find ridiculous the position that the DNSA stated yesterday—that he was bound to reflect the position of the Government. The DNSA is not bound to reflect the position of the Government. He was asked by the DPP—and therefore bound to respond to the DPP—whether or not he said that China was an active security threat. What I do not understand is how the then DNSA, both at the time and again when giving evidence yesterday, was able to say that China posed a range of threats—just as the Minister said—on different areas all across the board, from sanctions right the way through to espionage. I do not understand the difference between posing a series of significant threats to our national security in different areas across the board and being a threat to our national security. It is impossible to even conceive that we could define this so narrowly that we are unable to come out with the very simple statement: “They pose a threat to our national security.”
From my standpoint, I face a threat. I have been chased and regularly followed by wolf warriors, which are low-level intelligence operatives of China. They have impersonated me abroad and spread lies about what I have said, and those of us who have been sanctioned have been spied on. I know what a threat looks like. It looks like that. It is not a duck; it is a threat. There is no reason why any self-respecting Government could not have said that. The DNSA should have said that straight off—not go out and tell us that the police asked him to introduce what had been in the manifesto of the Labour party in the last election and then say that he knew nothing at all about it previously but had to put this in context. He was not asked to put it in context. The DSNA was asked to state clearly, from what he sees and the evidence he has taken, whether China poses an active security threat.
At the nub of this is another particularly important point. The 1 September meeting is critical in all this, because we have been given assurances throughout this—by the Prime Minister, for example, at Prime Minister’s questions on 15 October. He said:
“There was no further submission of evidence, one way or the other, after any discussion in September.”—[Official Report, 15 October 2025; Vol. 773, c. 368.]
Yet we know that now not to be the case. Why was the Prime Minister making such a fundamental statement at Prime Minister’s questions trying to shut this down? Did nobody bother to tell him that this had gone to a meeting? By the way, we were told that at no stage was the National Security Adviser or any other appointed individual at any meetings with or in contact with the DNSA throughout the submission of evidence. That is utterly untrue. We know that the DNSA was at the meeting chaired by the National Security Adviser on 1 September. What did they discuss? Was it football scores or what was right in front of them there and then: the still-unfinished business of whether or not the DNSA was going to comply with the DPP’s requirement for a very clear statement? It is that bit of subterfuge, with dipping and dodging throughout, that is really quite peculiar.
I have respect for the Minister. When he gets to his feet, can we not have this ridiculous game of “You did this” and “You said that”? I would simply like him to recognise that China poses a national security threat. Let us deal with that threat and take clear action, and not play games with terminological inexactitudes about what happened at what meeting.
We now know that the DNSA met all those characters —we do not know who they are—so the minutes of the meeting should be released. If the Government will not release them to Parliament, they can do it in camera to the Intelligence and Security Committee. They should do it to clear the record; I recommend that they do. People like me, the Chairman of Ways and Means and others have suffered attacks from this brutal regime, which has massacred people in China and committed genocide. Surely now is the time to make our position clear.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
Respect for democracy is fundamental to our British values, and to who we are as a country, but the world is increasingly an unstable place, and we can no longer be complacent about the multiple threats that our democratic norms and values face. Threats are coming from China, as we see from this espionage case, but also from other malign states, such as Russia and Iran. It is the job of all of us in the House to stand up to those threats and work in the interests of national security.
When I held a roundtable with my local Hong Kong community earlier this year to discuss proposed changes to immigration, I was saddened, but unfortunately not surprised, to hear that many members of the community chose not to attend a meeting with their local MP because they were worried about the long arm of the Chinese state, and the repercussions of the Hong Kong national security law on them and their family. Transnational repression is being used by hostile states to directly prosecute those whom they see as their enemies overseas, but it also has a wider, chilling effect, leaving whole communities afraid to engage with their basic democratic rights.
Meanwhile, I grow increasingly concerned about the influence of foreign actors on misinformation and disinformation online. In recent months, I have seen how anonymous posting on local social media groups in my community can have a pervasive effect on community cohesion and our democracy. Social media companies need to step up and do more on that. I am not suggesting that every anonymous social media post is from a Russian bot, but we all know that Russia and other states are using social media against us.
There have been direct attacks on our democracy, too, such as those from these Chinese spies. Last month, Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, pled guilty to eight counts of bribery; he was bribed to make statements in favour of Russia while he was a Member of the European Parliament.
I turn to the China spy case. Part of the reason why the case did not proceed to trial and the two gentlemen could not be prosecuted was prevarication over reforming the Official Secrets Act. The Act was introduced in 1911 —it predates the first world war—and despite unanimous recognition for at least eight years that it was completely out of date and not fit for purpose, the previous Government failed to act to fix the holes in our national security laws and left our country ill defended.
Sir Julian Lewis
Of course, the previous Government did subsequently introduce new legislation. However, under the 1911 Act, if the Government had been prepared to state that China was a threat, the case could have gone forward and would likely have been won. The hon. Member cannot blame that Act.
Peter Swallow
The case collapsed because under that Act neither Government provided enough evidence. The witness statements issued by the previous Government are a matter of record, and they do not state anywhere unequivocally that China is a threat. In fact, multiple Opposition Members have said on multiple occasions that it would not be possible to describe China unilaterally as a threat. That is a matter of record.
Chris Law
In 2023—we are going back a couple of years—Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee report on China warned
“that China’s view of an ideal future…would be antithetical to the UK’s interests”.
In its conclusion, China was detailed 11 times as a “threat”, an “acute threat” or a “grave threat”. Why can the UK Government today, based on a report from more than two years ago, not describe China as a threat?
Peter Swallow
The Minister quite clearly set out the range of threats posed by China. I am clear that China poses a threat. I also think that we have to be mature enough in this Chamber to accept that the way we deal with the second-largest economy in the world has to be to recognise the threats it poses to our democracy and our national security, but also all the ways in which we have to work with it.
I stood for election on a manifesto that committed to our co-operating with China where we can, challenging them where we must, and competing with them where we need to. I genuinely think that is a mature way of dealing with a state that does not share our values, and that poses a great threat to our democracy and to the way that citizens and residents of this country operate within a democracy, but that is also the second-largest economy in the world. As the former director of MI6 said on the “Today” show on the BBC this morning,
“we need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.”
We need a mature acceptance of the risks that China poses, and that means recognising that we cannot just walk off the pitch and not deal with the second-largest economy in the world. It is infantile and not realistic to suggest otherwise.
If the new Act had been in place sooner, it is possible that these men could have been prosecuted successfully under it. I therefore have a simple question for Conservative Front Benchers, and they need to be clear on this point: why did they wait so long to replace a vital piece of security legislation, and make sure that we had the appropriate tools to keep this country safe? I am happy to take interventions on that point.
Peter Swallow
As has already been set out, the threat from China has evolved over time. I would have loved it if the previous Labour Government had amended the Act, but it was the Conservative party that held a consultation, and then sat on the results for eight years and did nothing.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
In its inquiry on China from July 2023, the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which I was a member at the time, concluded that China was a threat. The Committee took evidence not from junior security officials, but from the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, the director general of the Security Service and the director of GCHQ, the chief of Defence Intelligence and—this is an important “and”—all the deputy National Security Advisers at the time. That is already public; they reported to the Committee.
That report is clear and unambiguous in calling out China as a national security threat to UK interests. It is also crystal clear, taking the report as a whole, that China’s threat is both live and active. The report was from July 2023, and the alleged offences took place, apparently, from December ’21 to February ’23. I am aware that the refresh of the integrated review of ’21 was in March ’23. However, the Committee’s inquiry started taking evidence from those senior officials from November 2017 to a similar time in 2019, and then the subsequent Committee carried on its work. Senior national security officials were giving evidence to the ISC about China being a national security threat well before the offences happened in this place.
Mark Pritchard
If we have the directors of all the intelligence agencies suggesting that China is a threat, it does not get much better than that. We have great deputy national security advisers, but their line managers—their directors, their bosses—were also clearly stating that China was a national security threat. In fact, the word “threat” is mentioned 284 times in that 207-page report.
The key word in this whole episode involving the deputy National Security Adviser—that is, the DNSA for intelligence, defence and security, not the other two remaining DNSAs, unless the Minister wants to correct me—is “active”. The question is whether China was an active threat, as underscored by the testimony to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy yesterday. The evidence in the ISC’s report would suggest that China has been known to be an active threat for some time. I have mentioned the various reviews. Indeed, in his own witness statement, the DSNA refers to China conducting “large-scale espionage operations”. Again, this is not a historical reference or a past-tense reference; it is clearly referring to the here-and-now operations taking place today. There is clearly an active threat, not just a general or undetermined threat.
China being an active threat was also underscored by the director general of the Security Service’s recent speech, in which he referred to China’s
“cyber-espionage…clandestine technology transfer…interference in UK public life”
and
“harassment and intimidation of opponents”.
Once more, these threats are not just historical; they are current and active, happening in the UK right now. They have not stopped. They are increasing. They continue.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I am listening carefully to my right hon. Friend’s excellent speech. Did he see, in the testimony yesterday, the intervention in which Sir Chris Wormald suddenly said that he did not believe that Ken McCallum, the chief of MI5, had described China as a threat? He intervened on the DNSA to make that point. That is fundamentally untrue, is it not?
Mark Pritchard
My right hon. Friend makes a good point. I think hon. Members will take their own view on who they think is the expert on national security. I think it will be Sir Ken McCallum, who is a long-serving and distinguished member of the UK intelligence community.
Mark Pritchard
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not, because I will not get another minute, and I want to make some progress and allow other colleagues to speak.
The director general’s speech was explicit. The Security Service is very clear-eyed about the national security threat from China, even though Ministers might be tempted, arguably, to recalibrate and put economic interests over the UK’s national security interests. I wonder whether there might be other factors at work here, too, including underlying vested interests and competing interests between different parts of Government, and even some conflicting personalities. We do not have time to go into that today. Today’s debate is rightly focused on whether politics got in the way of national security.
A wider question might be why a political adviser was appointed to the role of National Security Adviser in the first place, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said. Perhaps there is something to see here. The current National Security Adviser has wide and vast experience, and I pay tribute to him for his important role in the Northern Ireland peace process and other peace-brokering exercises he has done around the world. There is absolutely no doubt that he is a long-standing, distinguished civil servant, but the fact that an outsider, rather than insider, became the National Security Adviser might be an issue as well. Some may see that as a strength, but today’s proceedings might suggest that it could be a weakness in this case. There is a question mark about that, of course.
Back to China. The conclusions and recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s inquiry on China talk about proper oversight. We need to ensure that, for example, the investment security unit has proper oversight by the ISC, because if there was ever a place where it was likely that politics would conflict with the economic interests of this country, it was that unit. That is absolutely critical. When politics gets too close to professional, cool, calm intelligence judgments, the situation will always be fraught with danger, as this country witnessed with the Iraq war. In conclusion, when—
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) touched on several relevant points. There was a time in this House when a Member coming under attack and finding themselves on the wrong end of something was a moment of unification for us, and we would come together to find a way forward collectively. It should be of great regret to us all that following the events that happened to the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) and the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), we are throwing political rocks at one another about meetings that may or may not have happened over the last six or seven years. I do not know the hon. Lady, but I know the right hon. Gentleman. He is a gentleman of the utmost standing and principle, and I cannot imagine the horrors that he has been through and how much they have disrupted his life. We should keep that at the forefront of our minds in this debate.
We have had a complex relationship with China for the past decade. I cannot be the only one who is old enough to remember the pictures of the President of China pulling pints in the Plough with the former Prime Minister, who was subsequently the Foreign Secretary when some of what we are talking about was happening. We have not had a consistent approach to China publicly. I say “publicly”, because the evidence we have heard from various Opposition Members this evening makes it quite clear that officials in the last Government were naming China as a threat. They were using that terminology, but unfortunately the political faces of that Administration were not.
I will not get into the rights and wrongs of that, but it is clear that there has been inconsistency in the language applied to China throughout this period. If I were more legally minded, I would say that that may have led to the current situation, in which the CPS is saying one thing and the DNSA is saying something else, and we are getting the interpretation of an illustrious former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox). By the way, I remember the debate in November 2017 when we argued for a Humble Address. Many Conservative Members said that it was a terrible idea to publish Government information, and it could never be done because it would undermine that information. They said that in the future, they might ask for such information and we would say no, and we are clearly at that point today.
We all invest a lot of time and energy into this job, and into our staff. We are at the mercy of the vetting services to make sure that the staff who work for us are looked into properly. We just do not know, for instance, whether operatives from other hostile states are active in staffing units. We can pretend we do, but we honestly do not. I hope we will get some answers from the Minister about how we have got to this point, but what I want to understand is how will we make sure that the same thing does not happen again.
How will we get to a point, in this Parliament, where we can be sure that every Member of Parliament—regardless of which political party they come from, the position they hold, their standing or their length of service—is free from such political interference, oversight and spying? How can we ensure that no more Members are sanctioned, as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green was? He has talked eloquently to the House on numerous occasions about the disruption to his life. For us to do our job properly, we must have confidence in the people around us and the advice we receive from officials, and we have to be certain that the processes that are in place to keep us safe are doing their job.
Ultimately, we all come here to do a job, and to do it well. We are only human, and we ought to hold at the forefront of our minds the fact that mistakes have been made—I think we would all agree on that; I do not think anyone can say, hand on heart, that everything has gone perfectly up to this point—but the key thing is how we learn from that and prevent it from happening again. That, Madam Deputy Speaker, is where I will draw my remarks to a conclusion.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), and I think he hit the nail on the head. I have been thinking throughout the debate that this is not just about the failure of the prosecution, but about our approach to China—not just this year, last year or during this Government; this has gone on for years and years. The sanctions were imposed in March 2021, which is four and a half years ago. Interestingly, neither the Government of the day nor the official Opposition demanded sanctions; it was the Speakers of the House of Commons and the House of Lords who responded by banning the Chinese ambassador from entering. It has been reported that at the time, the Government attempted to overturn that decision. The key point, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central has said, is crystal clear: all of us need to work on our lines and we need cast-iron assurances that, no matter where we have been in the past, going forward we will be very clear about the real threat that China poses.
China’s history tells us that already: six decades of military occupation in Tibet; the mass detention, re-education and forced sterilisation of the Uyghur population; we have witnessed democracy come under attack in Hong Kong time and again; and there is the ever-present threat against Taiwan. China runs a global influence operation and it has been acknowledged in this House that the united front has penetrated every sector of the United Kingdom’s economy. We have been well warned.
As I said earlier, and as has been repeated many times, in 2023 the Intelligence and Security Committee said that China was a “threat”, an “acute threat” and a “grave threat”. In 2022, the head of MI5, Ken McCallum, said that the Chinese threat
“might feel abstract. But it’s real and it’s pressing. We need to talk about it. We need to act.”
That is what we have failed to do until now.
If one of the key hinderances to the prosecution appears to be the concern that the Government would not be able to convince the jury that China was an enemy, how would the Minister describe a state that conducts long-term, large-scale espionage operations, including recruiting those who work in Parliament, and that poses a serious national security threat on these islands? Why has it taken the failure of this case for the Government to definitively state that China is a threat? Why has this position come as a response to an embarrassing political crisis?
Sir Julian Lewis
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent and unanswerable case, but the trouble is that even in the circumstances of this case, the Government have not said that China is a threat. They keep saying that it poses a range of serious threats, but they keep baulking at saying that it is a threat. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has no hesitation in saying that China is a threat, and he should challenge the Government to do likewise.
Chris Law
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. China is a real and serious threat. I say that not just as an individual who happens to chair the all-party parliamentary group on Tibet, who is anxious about being spied on too, but on behalf of my party and of colleagues across the House who feel the real and present threat not only to ourselves but to our constituents.
Why has this position come as a response to an embarrassing political crisis, rather than as the principled position and proactive strategy for which so many of us have been calling for so many years? Why is it, as Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, put it that
“the Chinese Communist Party’s progress towards the ‘Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation’…has met formidable resistance, not from governments, but little ole’ constituency MPs.”?
That is a really good question to consider.
The Government and the Opposition will squabble over who met with whom when, about who said what when, and about who they can blame to squeeze as much political one-upmanship from this case as possible, but the Chinese Communist party must be laughing at this House right now, as we ping-pong when it is clear that we need national security to be taken very seriously and we need to see China placed on the foreign influence registration scheme.
Public trust and the confidence of international allies are wavering, and the ongoing threat to our national security, democratic institutions and economic infrastructure remains. To conclude, it is time to end the inertia, caution and self-censorship from Whitehall and from Government when it comes to China, and to acknowledge, address and act on the threat that we continuously face.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I put on record my anger at the collapse of the case. Colleagues have talked about the particulars of the case, so I will use the short time that I have available to broaden the lens and look again at the foundations of our security.
When the Conservative party brings Opposition day debates to the House, I attend because I am interested to hear the development of thinking in the party as it seeks to become a future Government. I also think about the party’s record in government and where it is going. I will make two points that I think the Opposition will disagree with, but I hope some Members will agree with my third point.
First, any Government, from whichever party, have a duty to invest in the institutions, infrastructure, capabilities and knowledge that enable our long-term advantage and security. Those are not built in five minutes, but they can be built in 14 years. It is my view that in the 14 years that the Conservatives were in power, they gave insufficient regard to building those things that can shore up our security.
Secondly, in cases where the Conservative Government did bother to build or pursue infrastructure, they opened the door to Chinese firms. While the Conservative leadership pretend to know what they think about China now, in truth they did not know what to think about China when they were in office, and that is an important reality to stare at. When it came to Huawei and 5G, the Conservatives were in, then they were out. When it came to nuclear, the Conservatives were in, then they were out. We are still unpacking George Osborne’s mistake on that front.
That contrasts sharply with the position of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I rediscovered his 2020 Hudson Institute speech, and I thought it was a very good insight into the situation at that time. Looking back at it five years on, it had considerable foresight on what has occurred. I am very sorry and saddened that he has experienced what he has at the hands of the Chinese leadership—other colleagues have experienced the same—but he is in a minority in his party in standing up on these issues.
I do not believe that the Conservative leadership have been as clear in their thinking or as forceful in their condemnation, and for the leadership of the right hon. Gentleman’s party to now pretend that they were is inaccurate and does him a disservice. We should contrast his position with the words of the Leader of the Opposition when she was in Cabinet. As the Business Secretary pursuing business, she said:
“We certainly should not be describing China as a foe”.
We should contrast his position with that of one of the nine Conservative Foreign Secretaries, who said it would be
“impossible, impractical and—most importantly—unwise”
to sum up China in one word as a threat. As a leadership team, the Conservatives need to stop throwing mud and to come to terms with what happened on their watch.
We must also look reality in the face: we cannot shy away from engagement with China. I bet that most Opposition Members have an iPhone in their pocket that was made in China; I bet they have other things in their home that were made in China. We must engage, but all of us in this Parliament must do so with our eyes wide open about the risks that that involves. Some of us in this Parliament have prophesied about that for many years and for longer than others, but we must be aware of that.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I was not going to intervene, but the hon. Gentleman made a statement about me justifying the position of the Opposition, as opposed to the Government. I assure him that had the two sides been switched, I would be carrying out exactly the same cross-examination that I have done today. No matter who has been in government, I seem to have been in opposition, and I want to say so. I am not doing this for any betterment; I am doing this because it is right.
Tom Hayes
I apologise if I misrepresented what I was saying. I was saying that throughout his time on these Benches, the right hon. Gentleman has been forceful in his condemnation. Whoever was in government, I believe that he would have done that, but I do not believe that the Conservative leadership either on the Opposition Benches or in office did the same. That is the point I was trying to make.
The Opposition called this debate to throw mud, but it is an opportunity to think about the wider security context in which we operate. As the months go on, I am intrigued to see what the Conservative party’s posture will be as it contemplates the security and intelligence environment we are in. Will it shy away from engagement with China—a significant market and economic opportunity for us—or seek to engage with China with its eyes wide open?
The Conservatives need to accept that they did less than they could have done in office to create the foundations for our security and economic growth. In so doing, they made us more vulnerable. Until they accept that and apologise for it, it begs the question: why should any of us in this Chamber and in the constituencies we represent listen to them ever again on the subject of keeping our country safe?
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
The real threat to our security is not necessarily what others do in the shadows; it is what one’s own Government hide from the light. That is the essence of what we are trying to get to in the motion before us—we are asking the Government to publish the papers.
Let me take a step back from this issue to look at the way in which the public will perceive it. This is the biggest spy story in this country’s history, at least in this century. We can get into the tit-for-tat about what the PM did or did not know, whether the National Security Adviser speaks to his deputy or not, who told the deputy National Security Adviser that he needs to toe the Government line, and how the Labour manifesto got into the witness statements, but I want to concentrate more on the bigger picture.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) rightly pointed out the behaviour of the Government. The Prime Minister could have sorted this out by coming to the House and speaking about this topic. He could have laid it all out and put it all forward. The only thing we have had has been a statement before Prime Minister’s questions. Of course, we Back Benchers cannot ask questions after such statements—there is no way for us to do so. If the Government are so angry, why is more action not being taken? Why are people not being fired, and why are we still having this debate several weeks on if all the information is so crystal clear that this House can move on?
I am worried that this is a pattern of behaviour with the Prime Minister, because we saw this with the ambassador. The Prime Minister was the decision maker on that issue, but he did not come to this House; he sent one of his Ministers. I expect that the retort from Labour Members will be, “It was always thus”, but the reason this saddens me so much is that the Prime Minister is being judged by the standard that he set. He said that he would do things differently, but he is not. He is not coming to the House to explain when he could do so. We know that the information and the decisions rest with him.
When I pushed the Minister, the hon. Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), about leadership last time, that was not directed at him—I have a great deal of respect for him. He is following the leadership of the Prime Minister, who has not come to this House to explain what is going on. If this issue is as clearcut as Labour Members have said, that would be an easy case to make and this House would believe the Prime Minister, but we are not there. That is why I worry, because it leads to a wider debate and wider concerns among the public about whether something is going on.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the most obvious point is that, despite the Government’s disappointment at the collapse of the trial—we have heard numerous Ministers, including the Prime Minister himself, stress that—it is shocking that they appear not to have done every single thing possible to bolster the case and put the CPS in the best possible position to secure a prosecution? The two just do not add up.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
It is true that the Government have repeatedly expressed disappointment, but—still more disturbingly, in a sense—so has MI5. It is quite unusual for MI5 to intervene, by means of a speech by its head which made it very clear that MI5 was profoundly disappointed that this matter had not gone to court. Had it done so, it would have been the culmination of years of work done by MI5 to try to deal with Chinese espionage in Whitehall and Westminster.
Dr Evans
I will not, because I have taken two interventions already. My worry is about what the public perceive, because it is a statement of fact that since the Chancellor went to China, decisions have been made about the Chagos islands, for example, or British Steel and £1 billion—what is going on there? A spy case has now been dropped, and there is the possibility of a super-embassy and even ID cards. My constituents are coming to me seeing a running theme.
Tom Hayes
When I hear the hon. Gentleman speak, I listen to what he is saying—I think he could be a very good replacement for the shadow Minister on the Front Bench. The question I want to ask, though, is this: what is his view on the relationship of the UK to China? Ought we to engage and, if so, on what terms, or should we be economically decoupling? What is his view about the nature of that relationship?
Dr Evans
To repeat the quote we heard earlier, we need to walk and chew gum at the same time. It is easy to call China a threat, but still to engage. That is exactly what the Chinese Government do to us: they say, “We’re embarrassed. We’re upset. You promised us something”, and we just say, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry about that.” We could stand up for ourselves and say what we think. Let us not forget that we are in a trade deficit with China; it is economically in China’s interest to be working with us, as much as it is in our interest to be working with China.
My worry, though, is that the public are joining dots. The Government will say that there are no dots to be joined, but the longer this goes on and the more incidents come out, it becomes harder to make that argument. That brings us full circle to where I started, because this is about transparency and releasing the documentation.
Peter Swallow
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way and for bringing us back to where he started. He started his speech by suggesting that the Government were intervening unduly in this case. He then went on to suggest that the Government did not intervene unduly enough. Can he be clear on this: is his position and that of the Opposition that the Government should have interfered in an independent prosecution, or not? It is unhelpful to be saying both things at the same time.
Dr Evans
I feel I am being misquoted, because I have simply asked for all this to be resolved by publishing the information. The Government could come out and say that China is a threat. I have also said that we can call it a threat and work economically with the Chinese. That is what I hope will happen. [Interruption.] I will finish at that point.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
My hon. and right hon. Friends have set out well how the Government’s account of how the case collapsed simply does not add up, so in the interests of time I will make just this one point. If, as many on the Opposition Benches and I suspect to be the case, the Prime Minister’s account of this situation is not factually correct, he has allowed this case to collapse to win favour in Beijing. That is a profound state of weakness.
Even if the Prime Minister’s account of the situation is true, that means he does not have control over his officials. Serious national security decisions are being made without his knowledge. That, too, is a profound state of weakness. It is important to establish the facts.
Katie Lam
I regret that I cannot; I promised to speak briefly.
Whatever the facts may be, this is not how serious countries behave. Regardless of our politics, we should all want our country to be respected by our friends and our adversaries. Under this Government, our friends see us as unreliable and our adversaries see us as a pushover. It is time for the Government to tell the truth and undo some of the harm that they have done to this country’s standing in the world.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I will be starting the Front-Bench contributions at 6.40 sharp.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
Among all the finger-pointing in this House, there are some immutable facts, and one is that in the spring of 2024, the evidential burden to bring a prosecution was met, because the CPS levelled a charge that the two individuals were guilty under the 1911 Act of having information capable of assisting an enemy. The first point is that a deficiency in the 1911 Act is not the problem, because the CPS was capable of bringing the charge. The second point is that to bring the charge, the evidential tests for bringing a prosecution had to be met: that there was a reasonable prospect of conviction and that it was in the public interest.
The unanswered question in all this is what happened between the spring of 2024 and September 2025, when suddenly the same evidential test was not met. What changed? It was met, or the charges could never have been brought, but suddenly it was not met and the charges were dropped. It seems pretty clear from what has been said to a Committee of this House that what changed was that the Government backed off in their evidence as to what would establish whether China was an enemy.
The Government were assisted in the meantime by the Bulgarian case, where the Court of Appeal refined “enemy” to “posing threat or threats”. Indeed, the Court said it was a matter of common sense as to whether something or someone was an enemy. There is no greater jury question than to decide whether or not something is common sense. The prosecution looked easier after the Court of Appeal decision, not harder, yet the prosecution was dropped. That is yet to be explained to this House. It seems to me that it can only be explained by the Government’s failing to come up to proof. Since they had come up to proof to bring the charge in the first place, they obviously retreated. We can talk around this as much as we like, but that seems to me to be the immovable reality of the situation.
There are, of course, issues here about the equivocation of the Government towards China, but it is an equivocation that is even infecting devolution. Coming up in Northern Ireland is a co-sponsored conference between the Chinese Government and the Sinn Féin Economy Minister to talk about infrastructure and investment. I say to this Government that they need to take a long, hard look at the way in which devolved institutions, particularly in Stormont, are playing footsie with the Chinese Government.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
“In my opinion, China poses an active and current threat to the United Kingdom.” That is all that the Government needed to say to the Crown Prosecution Service in order to secure this conviction, and yet they did not.
As recently as 12 days ago, the director general of M15 said that China posed a daily threat. In July 2022, he and his FBI counterpart said that China was posing a growing threat. The former Security Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), said it in April 2024, from that Dispatch Box, and the July 2021 integrated review said that China posed the
“biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security.”
It is pretty simple. I have said it, and the Government could have said it, but they did not.
The Government’s commentary on this case has been evasive and sometimes misleading. For example, the Prime Minister claimed in India, on 7 October, that what mattered in this case was the previous Government’s designation of China. He said it again, from that Dispatch Box, on 15 October. He said that the issue was the position of the last Government, and the Paymaster General said it again in his opening speech. That claim, made by the Prime Minister and made again by the Paymaster General earlier today, is categorically untrue. We know it is untrue because on page 4 of his letter, the Director of Public Prosecutions said it was untrue. He said:
“The test was therefore positively not what the then Government was prepared to… say in public…whether framed as…policy or otherwise…but…whether China was—as a matter of fact—an active threat to national security.”
He said it again in evidence yesterday. He said:
“We were looking to the DNSA to provide evidence of the actual threat…and not what government policy was.”
The DPP has said that categorically in writing and in evidence yesterday. What the Prime Minister said was misleading, and I ask this Minister, the Security Minister, to retract it on the Prime Minister’s behalf.
Moreover, the Security Minister himself said on 15 September that the collapse of the case had come as a big surprise to the Government, and that they heard about it only that morning. He said:
“the decision was communicated this morning”.—[Official Report, 15 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 1187.]
That, I am afraid, was not true. The decision was communicated on 3 September at the latest, and it most certainly did not come as a surprise to the Government.
It was not the case that, as the Minister claimed, he could not comment on why the case had collapsed, as if he did not know about it, because on no fewer than nine different occasions, according to the DPP, the Crown Prosecution Service pleaded with the Government—begged the Government—to say those simple words that I said a couple of minutes ago and the Government, over two years, refused to say. In June 2024, December 2024, February 2025, May 2025, July 2025—twice, on 3 and 10 July—August 2025, 3 September 2025 and 9 September 2025, the CPS begged the Government to say those simple words, and the Government would not say them. Why exactly was the Security Minister acting all surprised on 15 September, claiming that he did not know what was going on, when on nine separate occasions the CPS had pleaded with the Government?
Now we come to the meeting of 1 September, a meeting that the Home Secretary, quoted in The Telegraph on 5 October, claimed did not happen. Well, we now know that it did happen. What we do not know, however, is precisely what was discussed at that meeting. We have not seen the minutes of it, and we do not know the actions arising from it. We do know that it was chaired by Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser. We know that many people were there. We know that the deputy National Security Adviser, Matt Collins, was there. We also know that on 14 August, two and a half weeks before that meeting, he attended a conference that included the First Treasury Counsel, at which it became clear that Mr Collins would not change his evidence, and the case would therefore collapse. So Mr Collins went into that meeting on 1 September, most likely knowing that the case was unlikely to proceed. Was that discussed? Was the possibility of providing more evidence discussed in that meeting? We do not know. That is why the minutes need to be published.
We know for a fact that, on 3 September, the Director of Public Prosecutions informed the Cabinet Secretary and the DNSA that the case was not going to be proceeding on the evidence as it stood. The DPP also said in page 6 of his letter:
“It was agreed that”
the Cabinet Secretary
“might inform a limited group, including some ministers.”
I therefore ask the Security Minister to tell the House now which Ministers were informed pursuant to that meeting on 3 September, and whether they took any action as a result—for example, deciding to provide better evidence, which they could have done. It was recently reported in The Sunday Times that the Home Secretary got wind of this around that time, and decided to try to intervene.
I did ask the Security Minister this in an urgent question last week, and many of my hon. Friends did as well, but he did not answer the question, so perhaps he now can: when did the Home Secretary become aware of the collapse of the trial? Did she try to intervene? If so, how? It is quite clear that the Government, had they wanted to, could have intervened between 3 September, when the Cabinet Secretary was informed and was given permission to inform Ministers, and the meeting on 9 September, six days later, when the CPS tried, one last time—at least the ninth time—to get the evidence it needed, but, once again, it was not forthcoming.
Did the Government have any discussions in that period, between 3 and 9 September, about further evidence that they might have provided? If they did not, why not? A few simple words were all that were needed—words not about the previous Government’s policy, but about the facts as they stood on the ground. I uttered those words just a few minutes ago—it was simple enough—and if this Government had said what I said a few minutes ago, this case would have proceeded. Why did they choose not to do that?
Members of this Parliament have been spied on by a hostile state: a state that has stolen intellectual property on an industrial scale, both covertly and through acquisition; a state that plans to build a large embassy, probably for espionage purposes among other things; a state that has opened secret police stations; a state that has put bounties on the heads of people living in the United Kingdom; and a state that has actively supported Russia in its war against Ukraine. The Government could not produce evidence that it was an active and current threat, even though I think it is quite clear to everyone in this Chamber that it was.
Why did the Government not provide the evidence they were asked to provide at least nine times? Is it because they are more interested in getting some sort of economic bailout from the Chinese, to fix the mess they have created, than they are in our national security? That is the question they need to answer.
If this House and the country are to understand exactly what happened with this case, we need full transparency and full disclosure: the minutes of those meetings, the actions arising from them, and the correspondence with the CPS. If they really want transparency—as the Minister for the Cabinet Office said earlier—all they have to do is support this motion and put this material where it belongs: in the public domain.
The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)
I begin by thanking the Opposition for bringing forward this Opposition day debate, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) for moving this motion, and the shadow Home Secretary for his remarks.
As I have repeatedly set out to the House, the Government are extremely disappointed that this case will not be heard in court. I also share Members’ concerns about the threats that we face from espionage.
Dan Jarvis
I am just going to make a bit of progress. Let me be clear about two things right from the start. First, we would not be discussing this here today had the outdated Official Secrets Act 1911 been replaced sooner. Secondly, it is the responsibility of the CPS and the DPP to bring criminal prosecutions and compile evidence. The statements submitted to the JCNSS confirm that, as does the evidence that the Joint Committee heard yesterday from the Cabinet Secretary and the DNSA.
We have been consistently clear that no Ministers and no special advisers interfered in the provision of evidence under this Government.
Mark Pritchard
Can the Security Minister confirm to the House that the UK Government, at ministerial level and diplomatic level, have not been threatened by the Chinese state about this trial? Has it said, “If this trial goes ahead, there will be consequences”? Is the Minister aware of any discussions or any correspondence, either from the Chinese embassy or directly from Chinese Ministers to ours, that threatens this nation?
Dan Jarvis
I say to the right hon. Gentleman—whom I hold in high regard, not least for the work that he did on the ISC—that I can give him the assurances that he seeks. I can also assure him and the House how seriously this Government take the challenges that we face from countries right around the world.
Let me return to the DNSA’s evidence. As his written evidence makes clear—this is an important point that the House will want to note—from the moment the DNSA’s witness statement was submitted, he was a fully bound witness in criminal proceedings. His evidence had not yet been heard or tested in court, so his witness evidence could not be and was not shared, and this was later confirmed by the CPS.
In this debate and in recent weeks, there have been a number of different, and at times conflicting, claims about this Government’s involvement in the case, and I want to address those claims directly today. At the DNSA’s request, the word “enemy” was removed from the first witness statement during the drafting process, because it did not reflect the Government’s policy at the time. The DNSA made amendments to ensure that his witness statement text reflected his assessment of the strongest elements of the evidential material provided by Counter Terrorism Policing, by demonstrating that the information that was alleged to have been provided was prejudicial to the safety or the interests of the UK.
When CTP approached the DNSA to write a supplementary statement in November 2024, he was specifically asked to comment on whether China posed an active threat to the UK’s national security during the period of 31 December 2021 to 3 February 2023, and to confirm whether that remains the position at the time of writing. That is why paragraph 6 of the second statement references part of the current Government policy towards China.
Dr Luke Evans
The Minister is making a powerful point about the active threat. At this point in time, do the Government perceive China to be an active threat?
Dan Jarvis
As the hon. Gentleman knows—I think I may have even said this to him previously, and certainly to the House—China presents a series of threats to the Government. I will say a little bit more about that.
As time is short, I want to focus on the DNSA and the evidence that he has given, because that is important for the House. The DNSA confirmed to the JCNSS yesterday that he used language from an answer to a parliamentary question in his third statement, in which he provided the current Government’s position as context, as had been requested. The DNSA’s third statement was written in a way that ensured consistency with his first two statements.
For the sake of clarity, I will say it again: the current National Security Adviser had no role in either the substance of the case or the evidence provided. There has been misreporting, speculation and fabrication about the officials’ meeting that the National Security Adviser chaired on 1 September—the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned it just a moment ago. I can tell him and the House that a meeting of senior officials took place on 1 September to discuss the UK’s relationship with China. The meeting was specifically set up to provide—
Dan Jarvis
Let me just finish my point. I will come back to the right hon. and learned Gentleman if time allows.
The meeting was specifically set up to provide the FCDO with an opportunity to discuss—at an appropriately senior official level; no Ministers attended the meeting—what the approach would be to handling engagement with China across a range of scenarios related to this case, as well as in relation to wider issues that would come up. Those who attended the meeting were operating on the basis that the trial would go ahead at the start of October.
Dan Jarvis
I am going to make a bit of progress, because time is against me.
Meetings such as this are a routine part of the NSA’s role.
Dan Jarvis
I am going to make a bit of progress, because time is against me.
Meetings such as this are a routine part of the National Security Adviser’s role of co-ordinating Departments across Government.
Sir Geoffrey Cox
Will the Minister give way on the question of who was present?
Sir Geoffrey Cox
Why was the Attorney General’s Office represented and present? If the meeting had nothing to do with the case, why was the Attorney General’s Office present through its representative?
Dan Jarvis
Simply because a number of Departments were represented at this meeting, as would normally be the case.
Sir Geoffrey Cox
The Attorney General’s Office has nothing to do with foreign policy.
Dan Jarvis
The right hon. and learned Gentleman served in a Government a number of years ago. I can give him an assurance that this Government work collaboratively across Government with other Departments, and therefore it seems to make perfect sense that other Departments would be represented at such a meeting.
I will try to reflect some of the points that have been made in this debate, including the point from the shadow Home Secretary, who asked specifically about the Home Secretary. I can tell him and the House that no Minister—no Minister in this Government—was involved in any aspect of the production of evidence.
Dan Jarvis
The Liberal Democrats spokesman, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), offered his service as a marriage guidance counsellor. I would advise him not to give up his job.
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (John Slinger) nailed the myths, I thought very effectively, in his contribution. The right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox) described his duck. It felt as if his contribution was as much aimed at the DPP and the CPS as at the Government, but it was engaging none the less. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) raised important points about some of the critiques that have been levelled, and I agree with him about trying to establish cross-party consensus.
The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green spoke about the nature and the description of the threats we face from China. Let me say to him that it is completely unacceptable that he and other Members of this House are sanctioned, and I give him an absolute assurance of the seriousness with which this Government take those particular threats. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) spoke about transnational repression. He has raised it previously, and I can tell him that the defending democracy taskforce has concluded a review, and the Government have developed a range of support and security mechanisms. Most importantly, however, we condemn any malign activity towards anyone here in the UK.
The right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) spoke about the work of the ISC, and he was right to do so. The Government welcome the work of the ISC in looking carefully at the circumstances of this case, as we do the important work of the JCNSS. I thought my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) made the really important point that, given the concerns that have rightly been expressed right across this House about what has happened, we should be trying to seek to work together and establish a consensus. I thought he made that point very powerfully.
Time is running short, so let me say to the House that national security is the first duty of this Government. That is why we oppose the Opposition’s motion, which would see the release not only of information subject to legal professional privilege, but of information vital to the security of the United Kingdom, including advice to the Prime Minister. Successive Governments, including the previous Government in which the shadow Home Secretary served as a Minister, have maintained that position. This is not a question about parliamentary scrutiny. We welcome the ongoing process with the JCNSS, and we look forward to continuing to work with it, as we do with the ISC. This Government will continue to develop a consistent and pragmatic approach to economic engagement, but without compromising our national security.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I have a very simple question: if the Minister will not give the minutes of that meeting to the House, will he give them to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which sits in camera?
Dan Jarvis
The Government have given a very clear commitment that we will co-operate and work closely with all of the Committees of this House.
It is precisely because everything this Government do is rooted in the national interest that I say that this Government are extremely disappointed that this case has collapsed. It is right that the matter is being investigated by the appropriate parliamentary Committees, and we look forward to co-operating with that work.
Question put.