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The former head of MI6 has questioned the decision by the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service to drop charges against two British men accused of spying on behalf of China, saying it will have left Washington “perplexed”.
Sir John Sawers, ex-chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, said China posed “a range of threats” to the UK including cyber threats, potential theft of industrial secrets and its efforts to control the Chinese diaspora in Britain.
“I think these two people accused of spying in parliament . . . what they were doing, if the allegations are true, was certainly illegal, and frankly I’m a bit confused and unsure about why the prosecution was dropped,” he told Times Radio on Sunday.
“I think the Americans will be equally perplexed as to why the prosecution was dropped when the case looked pretty clear.”
Sawers said that although China was an economic partner of the UK, it still posed an intelligence threat.
The Sunday Times quoted a senior Trump administration official criticising the UK authorities for dropping the prosecution.
“The US has been warning allies about the Chinese threat to our combined national security since President Trump first came to office in 2017,” they said. “The US government exercises extreme caution in sharing information with foreign governments subject to adversarial coercion and influence.”
The Trump administration has previously warned Downing Street about China’s attempts to build a vast new embassy in London at Royal Mint Court on the edge of the City of London.
Some US and UK security officials have also raised concern about the embassy plan because of the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communications cables.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the National Cyber Security Centre had been blocked from giving evidence to the planning process about national security risks at the site.
Sawers’ comments come just days after former national security adviser Lord Mark Sedwill argued that “of course” Beijing presented a direct threat to national security. Sedwill said he was “genuinely puzzled” that the trial fell apart last month.
The CPS said the trial collapsed because the government would not deliver evidence to show China had been a threat to Britain’s national security at the time of the alleged offences.
Sir Keir Starmer has argued that Beijing was not labelled an enemy by the previous government at the time of the alleged offences between 2021 and 2023.
“You have to prosecute people on the basis on what was the state of affairs at the time of the offence,” said the prime minister, a former director of public prosecutions, last week.
Christopher Cash, 30, a former parliamentary researcher at Westminster, and Christopher Berry, 33, a teacher who had worked in China, were charged in 2024 by the CPS with spying on parliamentarians at Westminster for China.
Both men have always denied any wrongdoing and have said the case’s collapse proved their innocence.
Starmer will come under new pressure to explain the background to the case when parliament returns from its conference season recess on Monday.
The saga has raised questions about the judgment of Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, a former chief of staff to Tony Blair as prime minister.
Critics believe Powell, appointed by the government last November, is behind an approach that has seen ministers limit their public criticism of China at a time when Starmer has made economic growth his priority.
The Financial Times has previously reported a row between Powell and the Home Office shortly before prosecutors announced they were dropping the case last month.
Bridget Phillipson, education secretary, was asked on Sunday if Powell had been involved in discussions about the evidence presented in the case.
“He did not have those conversations around the substance or the evidence of the case. These are matters for the relevant authorities, the Crown Prosecution Service and they date back to 2023,” she said.
In opposition, Labour promised to carry out an “audit of our bilateral relationship” with China to “understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities China poses”.
But the full audit has never been published, and was instead subsumed into a wider national security strategy overseen by Powell in the summer.
It said the UK should seek a “trade and investment relationship” with China while simultaneously warning that there had been an increase “in recent years” in activity by Beijing to undermine British democracy.
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