3 hours ago
4
Defence lawyers would have used Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly’s statements about China to dismiss a case against two men charged with spying for Beijing, the attorney general has argued.
Richard Hermer told parliament “there would have been plenty of reference” by lawyers defending Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry’s to Conservative ministers’ policy positions had the trial gone ahead.
The attorney general was giving evidence on the collapse of the Chinese espionage trial last month, which has triggered a blame game between the government and prosecutors over who bears responsibility.
Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Berry, a teacher, both denied charges of espionage under the 1911 Official Secrets Act. The legislation, now repealed because of its age, required prosecutors to prove China was an “enemy”.
Speaking to the joint committee on the national security strategy (JCNSS) on Wednesday, Hermer said Tory ministers’ statements would have been brought up in cross-examination as evidence that China was not seen by the government as an enemy at the time of the alleged offences between 2021 and 2023.
He said defence lawyers would have raised questions including: “Shall we look at what the foreign secretary at the time said at his Mansion House speech where he sets out the government’s position and he says you can’t call China a threat?
“Then shall we look … at what Ms Badenoch said when she was secretary of state that she wouldn’t call China a foe?”
Hermer told the committee: “The view of the government of the day was that China was not the enemy. And indeed I have no doubt there would have been plenty of reference to where the government of the day was saying it’s too simplistic to call China even a threat or an adversary.”
While he was foreign secretary in 2023, Cleverly used a Mansion House speech to argue that summing up China “in one word, whether ‘threat’, or ‘partner’, or ‘adversary’” was “impossible, impractical and – most importantly – unwise”. He called for a more constructive but robust bilateral relationship.
Asked whether China should be described as a “foe” or “threat” in 2023 after Cash and Berry were arrested, Badenoch said: “I would define it as a challenge … Certainly from my job as business secretary working on international trade in particular, we see at international level just how significant China is.”
Hermer defended prosecutors who “worked in good faith” and argued that the case failed because it had to be brought under “out of date” espionage laws that were “not fit for purpose”. The 1911 Official Secrets Act has been replaced by the 2023 National Security Act.
Hermer said it was “unwise to rush and say it’s farcical or it’s a catastrophic failure” that the charges were abandoned and insisted that everyone involved was “doing their best within their lanes”.
But he said the Crown Prosecution Service never approached him for help in “unblocking any evidential inquiries” and getting what it needed, although they could have done so. He stressed that if they had he “couldn’t have possibly intervened over the contents of the evidence”.
Hermer said he was “both surprised and disappointed” when he was told the case was being abandoned. He hit back at claims from the Conservatives that ministers had improperly intervened in the prosecution as “disgraceful” and “baseless” and said those claims would cause the “most long-lasting damage”.
John Hutton, a former Labour defence secretary, suggested that ministers were being complacent about the failures that led to the collapse of the case by blaming it on the outdated legislation.
Hutton argued that the “inherent reticence on the part of government to really call out the dangerous nature of Chinese espionage activity” could lead to other alleged spies not being prosecuted.
Hermer insisted that was not the case. “We now have legislation that is fit for purpose, and we will use that legislation whenever there’s credible evidence that people are seeking to damage the national interest of this country,” he said.
