National security adviser Jonathan Powell played no role in the collapse of a China spy trial, a cabinet minister has told Sky News.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, gave the government’s most definitive answer yet about whether Mr Powell was part of the reason the case into two men accused of spying for China was dropped weeks before they were set to go on trial.
Asked on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips if she could assure him that the national security adviser played no role in the decision, Ms Phillipson said: “Yes, I can give that assurance.
“We’re very disappointed that the CPS were not able to take forward the prosecution.”
Former Conservative home secretary Priti Patel called the assurance “a very bold statement”.
Parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash, 30, and teacher Christopher Berry, 33, were charged with passing politically sensitive information to a Chinese intelligence agent between December 2021 and February 2023. They denied the allegations.
Over the past week, Sir Keir Starmer, his ministers and Mr Powell have faced accusations they were involved in the trial being dropped.
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Sir Keir sidestepped Powell ‘involvement’
The director of public prosecutions (DPP), head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), took the unusual step of sending MPs a letter this week to state the government repeatedly refused to provide evidence that China represented a national security threat at the time of the allegations.
Stephen Parkinson said the CPS had tried “over many months” to get the evidence it needed to carry out the prosecution, but it had not been forthcoming from the government.
The government has said China needed to have been branded an “enemy” during the period they were accused of spying, which was when the Tories were in government, for the prosecution to go ahead.
The case was dropped after a meeting last month of government officials, including Mr Powell, the Sunday Times reported.
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Sir Keir said he wanted to be “absolutely clear no ministers were involved” in any decisions relating to the case, but sidestepped answering whether Mr Powell was involved.
Ms Phillipson continued to take the government line about China needing to have been deemed an “enemy” by the Conservative government – something the Tories say is an excuse because they said many times Beijing was a national security threat.
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Priti Patel: Political interference in judicial process
Priti Patel, who was Tory home secretary during most of the period the pair are accused of spying, said Ms Phillipson’s claim Mr Powell had no involvement was “a very bold statement”.
“It really is,” she told Trevor Phillips.
“The national security adviser, as we know, is a political adviser.
“However, we have read from newspapers, there are plenty of disclosures about various meetings that he was involved in, including with other senior civil servants, the permanent secretary to the Foreign Office, basically trying to rewrite the narrative around China, saying that they’re not a threat, they’re a challenge, and that there were meetings basically within government.”
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Ms Patel said it was “fundamentally political interference in the judicial process” by the Labour government.
And she said Sir Keir’s government should “of course” have designated China a threat and said the Tory government did so.
“They were an adversary,” she added.
“We put forward lots of legislation involved in our national security, acts of parliament stopping China and Chinese firms from buying and acquiring British companies because we knew that China was an adversary, a real threat to us.
“I saw that, I saw that obviously in ways in which I can’t disclose now.
“I saw that through classified information; our agencies, our intelligence and security agencies were saying that throughout and have been saying that consistently.”
