China spying a daily threat to UK, warns MI5 chief
Chinese state operatives present a daily national security threat to the UK, the head of MI5 Sir Ken McCallum has said, News.az reports citing BBC.
In a speech, he said MI5 had intervened operationally to disrupt Chinese activity of national security concern in the past week.
Addressing a row over the collapse of a case involving alleged spying on behalf of China in the UK, Sir Ken said the alleged activity was disrupted by MI5 and that it was "frustrating when prosecutions fall through".
The government and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are facing questions over the collapse of the case.
The CPS dropped the case last month after deciding the evidence did not show China was a threat to national security.
But witness statements from the UK's deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins - published late on Wednesday - are clear that the Chinese are carrying out spying operations against the UK, raising questions for the government and the CPS about why the prosecutions did not go ahead.
In the documents, he said China was carrying out "large scale espionage" against the UK and was "the biggest state-based threat to the country's economic security".
Sir Ken described Mr Collins as a "man of high integrity and a professional of considerable quality".
Asked whether China as a whole was a national security threat, Sir Ken said: "Question one is: do Chinese state actors present a UK national security threat?
"And the answer is, of course, yes they do, every day."
The second question, he said, was about the "overall balance" of the UK's relationship with China and that was "a matter for the government".
"When it comes to China, the UK needs to defend itself resolutely against threats and seize the opportunities that demonstrably serve our nation," he said.
The Conservatives have accused the government of allowing the spy case to collapse to avoid jeopardising economic relations with China.
This is firmly denied by the government, who blame the previous Tory administration who were in charge when Mr Collins sent his first evidence statement, for the collapse of the prosecution.
The head of the CPS Stephen Parkinson is also in the firing line, with MPs suggesting there was sufficient evidence to put the case before a jury.
He is reported to have told senior MPs on Wednesday that the evidence was "5%" short of what would have been required to stand a chance of getting a conviction.
Labour MP Matt Western, who heads the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy - made up of senior MPs and peers - said he was launching an inquiry into the collapse of the case.
In the first witness statement, sent in December 2023, Mr Collins outlines the case against former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash, 30, and academic Christopher Berry, 33.
The pair are accused of collaborating with a Chinese Communist Party leader who was deputy director of the Central National Security Commission, chaired by President Xi Jinping.
In one message, Mr Cash is alleged to have told Mr Berry: "You're in spy territory now."
Both men deny any wrongdoing.
The second witness statement, written by Mr Collins in February 2025, after Labour had taken power, said China's spying threatened "the UK's economic prosperity and resilience".
A third witness statement published in August this year restated the UK's view of the challenge posed by China.
But the two statements submitted under Labour made clear the government was "committed to pursuing a positive economic relationship with China".
China's foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said: "China's position is very clear: we firmly oppose peddling China spy narratives and vilifying China."
In a Commons debate, former Security Minister Tom Tugendhat, for whom Mr Cash was a parliamentary researcher, said he had been personally affected by the investigation into the allegations.
"My home has been broken into. My files have been ransacked. Somebody has been put into my office by a hostile state, and the two parties are playing politics with it," said the Tory MP.
He accused the government of being obsessed with following the correct process, rather than doing everything it could "to make sure the prosecution works".
"Well, who the hell's side are you on?" he asked Cabinet Office miniser Chris Ward, who had been given the job of defending the government.
Ward said he fully appreciated how the case had affected Tugendhat but the government's position was that "there will be no interference with the CPS in the process of this" and "every effort" would be made to support their case.
In a statement released on Wednesday evening, Mr Cash said he had been placed in an "impossible situation" because he had not "had the daylight of a public trial to show my innocence".
He added: "The statements that have been made public are completely devoid of the context that would have been given at trial."
While Mr Berry has previously denied spying for China, he has not commented since the day the case ended.
Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, who also previously employed Mr Cash as a parliamentary researcher, said Mr Collins's third statement includes language about China similar to that in Labour's election manifesto last year.
The witness statement and the manifesto both include the words "we will co-operate where we can, compete where we need to, and challenge where we must".
"There's a direct lift from the Labour Party manifesto," Kearns said. "It's very hard to believe there was no political interference and that a civil servant would have felt the need to do that."
But she said there been "misleading discussion" about whether China was deemed a threat to national security at the time of the alleged offences in 2023.
"In my view, the Crown Prosecution Service should have proceeded with this," Kearns said.
She added: "The case law shows it's for a jury to decide if China is or could be a threat to our country."
BBC News understands that Mr Collins assumed he had given enough evidence for the prosecution to continue when he submitted his third witness statement in August 2025.
A government source pointed to comments made by him where he described "the increasing Chinese espionage threat posed to the UK" as an example of why he believed he had said enough to satisfy the CPS's threshold for prosecution.
It is also understood that the CPS contacted Mr Collins after his first witness statement to ask for further clarification on the threat posed by China, but that they were not explicitly clear what the official would need to say in subsequent statements, in order to meet the CPS's threshold.
Mr Cash and Mr Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act in April 2024, when the Conservatives were in power.
They were accused of gathering and providing information prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state between December 2021 and February 2023.
The director of public prosecutions has said the case collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat.
He said while there was sufficient evidence when charges were originally brought against the two men, a precedent set by another spying case earlier this year meant China would need to have been labelled a "threat to national security" at the time of the alleged offences.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller said the witness statements raised "yet more unanswered questions", adding: "We clearly need a statutory public inquiry to get to the bottom of this whole fiasco."
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