Three theories. One is that researchers Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry were wrongly accused to begin with of violating the Official Secrets Act. Another is that the prosecutors, who now say that they cannot proceed for lack of evidence, originally had enough evidence to proceed, or thought they did, but now lack the evidence to proceed or realize that they lack the evidence to proceed. A third theory is that they succumbed to pressure from Downing Street (The Times [UK), September 19, 2025).
The first theory is defended by the accused and their lawyers.
Henry Blaxland KC, for Cash, said his client was “entirely innocent” and should have been “congratulated rather than prosecuted” for his work exposing risks posed by China.
Armstrong solicitors, for Berry, said he did not understand why the prosecution was brought, that he had never had access to classified information and that he had not harboured any pro-Chinese political sympathies.
The director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, “linked the decision to drop charges to the requirement under the Official Secrets Act of 1911 that information is passed to an ‘enemy’, raising the question of whether national security witnesses, who were expected to give evidence to support the claims, had backtracked. Parkinson insisted the CPS decision made the decision independently. However, the government has been accused of softening its approach to Beijing in the hope of improving economic relations.”
It would be outrageous to hint that the Starmer government might have pressed prosecutors to drop the case in order to further appease China if this weren’t so plausible.
Information
The Times report doesn’t give the reader enough information to make any judgment about whether Cash and Berry (shown above) are guilty of anything.
People at the scene of the crime would also like more information. Alice Kearns, a Tory Member of Parliament and chairwoman of the foreign affairs select committee, for whom Cash worked as a researcher, says that the government “has serious questions to answer. Parliament deserves answers, the country deserves answers, and obfuscation and a refusal to answer does nothing but make our democracy more vulnerable.”
Kearns has heard from Frank Ferguson, head of special crime and counterterrorism for the Crown Prosecution Service. He told her in writing that “the evidential standard for the offence indicted is no longer met.”
Because….?
Also: “I appreciate that you were operating in a context in which a research group chaired by you, which had access to other parliamentarians as well as yourself, was unfortunately targeted by China as a means of obtaining information from within parliament on the then government’s policies and views in relation to China.”
So something happened, in the prosecution’s view. The Chinese government, at least, is implicated. And the prosecutors are sympathetic.
“Door must be closed”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood have both “expressed disappointment about the decision” to drop the charges.
Speaker of the House of Commons Lindsay Hoyle says that the failure to prosecute Berry and Cash “leaves the door open to foreign actors trying to spy on the House. This door must be closed hard.”
In April 2024, before the landslide election for Labour, the two men had been charged on the basis of an allegation that between around January 2022 and February 2023, “for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state,” they had “obtained, collected, recorded, published or communicated to any other person articles, notes, documents or information which were calculated to be, might be, or were intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy.”
