Downing Street has said it would have been “absurd” for the Prime Minister to step in after being told the China spy case was going to collapse, stressing the case was a “criminal matter” for the Crown Prosecution Service to handle independently.
Statements provided by deputy national security adviser Matt Collins as part of the CPS’s case have prompted fresh questions about why it collapsed.
They showed the Government’s evidence warned of Beijing’s large-scale espionage but stressed the desire to seek a positive relationship with the economic superpower.
The CPS dropped the case after deeming the evidence did not show China was a threat to national security.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “The suggestion that the Prime Minister should have stepped in at this point is frankly absurd.
“If he was to do so he would have been interfering in a case related to a previous government, a previous policy, previous legislation.
“In a criminal matter it is the CPS and the DPP that, quite rightly, have independent responsibility for prosecuting cases in this country.”
The case against Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry was dropped by the CPS in September.
Both men, who deny wrongdoing, had been accused of passing secrets to China.
Chris Ward, in his first outing as a Cabinet Office minister in the Commons, had earlier told MPs the evidence in the three statements published on Wednesday night “sets out the threats China poses multiple times”.
Mr Collins called China “the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security” in one of the statements.
He said Beijing’s “highly capable” intelligence services are carrying out “large-scale espionage operations against the UK to advance the Chinese state’s interests and harm the interests and security of the UK”.
The Chinese activities “threaten the UK’s economic prosperity and resilience and the integrity of our democratic institutions”, he said.
But in the last paragraph of his third and final statement in August, just weeks before the case collapsed, he set out the Government’s approach to China.
He said it was “important for me to emphasise” that the Government “is committed to pursuing a positive relationship with China to strengthen understanding, co-operation and stability”.
The current Government’s “Three C’s” approach is based on co-operation where there are of shared interests, competition in other areas and challenge on issues including national security.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has questioned why Mr Collins’s final statement set out Labour’s approach to China.
She said: “Yesterday the Prime Minister insisted that the deputy national security adviser’s witness statements reflected the last Conservative government’s policy towards China.
“Now we discover that a witness statement sent under this Labour Government included language describing the current Government’s policy towards China, which was directly lifted from the Labour Party manifesto.
“Did an official, adviser or minister suggest that this should be included?”
A parliamentary committee will launch a formal inquiry into what has happened.
Labour MP Matt Western, chairman of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, said there are “a lot of questions yet to be asked” as he announced the move.
