Joint committee on national security strategy to hold inquiry into collapse of China spy trial, MPs told
Matt Western, the Labour chair of the joint committee on national security strategy, said that his commitee met this morning and has decided to hold a formal inquiry into this.
He said the chairs of the home affairs committee, the foreign affairs committee and the justice committee were among the committee’s members.
He asked for an assurance that the inquiry would have access to ministers and officials.
Ward said the government welcomed parliamentary scrutiny. He said he was sure witnesses would be made available to the committee.
Key events
Matthew Scott, a criminal barrister and legal blogger, is a rare voice speaking up for the CPS today. In a series of posts on social media, he argues that it was understandable why it did not want to try persuading a jury that China was an enemy when the government itself won’t use that language.
In defence of the CPS: the issue for the jury is whether China is an “enemy.” 3 witness statements saying it’s a threat to national security etc. None of the 3 use the word “enemy.”
Why not? It looks like a deliberate avoidance x3 of the word. If the government witness refuses to call China an “enemy,” I can see why the CPS may’ve thought it was likely that a jury would have refused to do so too.
At the very least it’s a point for a defence closing speech: “Members of the jury, even the prosecution witnesses refused 3 times to call China an “enemy.” And yet even though their own witnesses refuse to use that word, they are saying you must do so.”
Starmer says Badenoch ‘plainly wrong’ to imply last Tory government treated China as enemy
In his reply to Kemi Badenoch, Keir Starmer also said it was “simply untrue” to says that Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, intervened in the prosecution to say China could not be described as a threat. This claim has been widely made on the back of a Sunday Times report about Powell discussing the case at meeting in early September.
Starmer said:
There have been various reports alleging that, in a meeting in September, the national security adviser ruled that China could not be defined as a threat and took decisions relating to witnesses or evidence. That is simply untrue.
Starmer said Powell took part in routine discussions based on the assumption the case was going ahead. Powell was not involved in any decisions about evidence in the case, Starmer said.
He also said that Badenoch was “plainly wrong” when she implied that the last Conservative government had treated China as an enemy. He said:
To impliedly assert, as you do, that between 2021 and 2023 the policy of the then government was to treat China as an enemy within the meaning of the 1911 Act is plainly wrong.
MI5 chief ‘frustrated’ at failure to put men accused of spying for China on trial
Ken McCallum, the MI5 director general, has acknowledged his frustration at the failure to put on trial two Britons who had been accused of spying for China, in an apparent rebuke to prosecutors who dropped the high-profile case last month. Dan Sabbagh has the story.
Starmer defends his national security officials over China affair, saying he won’t stand for them being ‘unfairly blamed’
At the start of the week, Kemi Badenoch wrote an open letter to Keir Starmer containing six questions about the China spy affair.
In a reply to the Tory leader, Keir Starmer has restated his assertion that ministers and special advisers did not put pressure on witnesses, or seek to influence the trial.
He also said he would not stand for anyone being “unfairly blamed” – a comment aimed at attacks on Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, and Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser.
He said:
I can confirm that no minister or special adviser of this government placed any pressure on any witness that the CPS intended to call to trial, nor did they seek to influence the outcome of the trial in any other way.
Let me also say that I will not stand for anyone being unfairly blamed for this outcome.
I am confident that the deputy national security adviser, Matt Collins – a public servant of the highest calibre and integrity, who has made a significant impact on our national security – did everything possible within the constraints imposed by the previous government’s position on China.
Furthermore, the witness statements that we have now published show that the evidence he provided was in line with the then government’s publicly stated policy at the time.
Parliament’s joint committee on the national security strategy has now issued a statemetn confirming that it will hold an inquiry into the China spy case. (See 10.55am.) The committee includes the chairs of the foreign affairs, home affairs, justice, defence, international development, business and energy committees.
Matt Western, the committee chair, said:
Clearly there are still many questions yet to be answered by the government and the director of public prosecutions.
As the committee that scrutinises processes for national security decision-making, the JCNSS is the best forum for those questions.
We will be holding a formal inquiry as soon as we can and expect to hear evidence from the government and officials involved in these issues.
Hospice leaders welcome £80m funding for children’s hospices in England
An £80m boost for children’s hospices is a “significant first step” towards getting hospices on a stable footing, hospice leaders have said. As PA Media reports, the government has announced the new funding for children’s hospices in England, to be spread over three years.
Toby Porter, chief executive of Hospice UK, said:
This is a welcome and significant first step to placing the children’s hospice sector on a sustainable footing. The stability provided by a multi-year settlement will have a real impact on the care children’s hospices provide and the families they support.
No 10 says Badenoch’s claim PM should have intervened to stop China spy trial collapsing ‘absurd’
Downing Street has described Kemi Badenoch’s claim that he should have intervened in the China spy case to stop the prosecution collapsing as “absurd”.
Badenoch first made this argument yesterday, after No 10 said Keir Starmer was told the CPS was dropping the case two days before that was announced, and she repeated the claim today. (See 9.04am.)
Asked about Badenoch’s assertion at the No 10 lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:
The suggestion that the prime minister should have stepped in at this point is frankly absurd.
If he was to do so he would have been interfering in a case related to a previous government, a previous policy, previous legislation.
In a criminal matter it is the CPS and the DPP that, quite rightly, have independent responsibility for prosecuting cases in this country.
Reform UK accused of sowing division in Caerphilly byelection debate, as poll suggests Labour support has collapsed
Reform UK has been accused of sowing division over immigration in the south Welsh valleys constituency of Caerphilly before next week’s crucial Senedd byelection, Steven Morris reports.
As Steven reports, Caerphilly has always been a Labour seat, in Westminster and Senedd elections. In the Senedd election in 2021, Labour was ahead of Plaid Cymru by 46% to 28%.
But a Survation poll out today suggests that the Labour vote has collapsed, and that it is now a contest between Reform UK and Plaid – with Reform UK just ahead.
Commenting on the findings, Damian Lyons Lowe, Survation’s chief executive, said:
Welsh politics is on the cusp of an unprecedented transformation. The Labour and Conservative parties previously took a combined 63% of Caerphilly’s Senedd vote in 2021 -our polling indicates this may have plummeted to just 16% as both have seen an extreme fragmentation of their vote to both Reform and Plaid.
While Labour’s 100-year long unbeaten record in Caerphilly’s Senedd and Westminster elections is highly likely to be coming to an end, this type of result being replicated nationally will also see the end of over twenty years of Labour Welsh government dominance, with Reform or Plaid the likely party of power in 2026.
This Survation chart indicates how voting behaviour has changed in Caerphilly since 2021.
Survation surveyed 501 Caerphilly residents betweeen 7 and 14 October.
One of the best legal commentators on the China spy case affair has been Mark Elliott, professor of public law at Cambridge University, who has beeen writing about this on his Public Law for Everyone blog. In his latest post, written after the publication of the three witness statements, he lists six outsanding questions for the government and the CPS.
And here is his conclusion.
Points advanced about the independence of witnesses in the context of live cases are a distraction from the distinct but related fact that in this case, the witness statements in part concerned matters of government position and policy that … ought to be for ministers. In such a context, a distinction must be drawn between the independence of the witness in terms of the statement itself and the process of determining relevant issues of position and policy that are described in the witness statement. The question therefore remains: If ministers, and the national security adviser, were wholly uninvolved in this process, why were they uninvolved, given that the process of producing these witness statements entailed, in part, making determinations about and representing matters of government position and policy for which ministers, not officials, are constitutionally responsible?
Starmer accuses some universities, including Oxford, of being ‘too slow’ to tacke antisemitism
Keir Starmer has been speaking this morning at an event hosted by the Community Security Trust, which organises security for the Jewish community in the UK, particularly around synagogues. He does not seem to have said anything yet about the China spying case, but he made some comments relating to antisemitism.
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Starmer announced that Lord Mann, the government’s independent antisemitism adviser, will conduct a review looking at antisemitism in the NHS. He said:
Lord Mann is going to do a review of the NHS for us. Because you will know, and I know, there are just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively.
So we need to do that review. We’ve already put in place management training in relation to the NHS, but I think we need a wider review, because in some cases, clear cases are simply not being dealt with, and so we need to get to the root of that.
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Starmer said some universities, including Oxford, has been “too slow” in dealing with antisemitism. Referring to a recent case involving a student who has been arrested, Starmer said:
[Universities] should not be a place where Jewish students fear even to go, in some cases not wanting to go to university to have the education that they’re entitled to, or if they do go are concerned about their identity, how they’re going to be dealt with and reacted to. We have to stand up to that. And some universities have been too slow.
Look at Oxford this week. That was a slow reaction to the clearest of clear cases.
I won’t say any more than that, because obviously there are proceedings in place now.
Tugendhat claims China spy case shows ‘bureaucrats in charge of everything’ under Labour, with democracy sidelined
Tom Tugendhat, the Tory former security minister, and another target of the alleged spying operation, also raised a point of order at the end of the statement. He said:
Given that the government’s position is that the bureaucrats run the government, the bureaucrats are in charge of everything, may we dissolve this house and save the taxpayer the money? Because clearly, this isn’t a democracy any more.
Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, replied: “I’m sure [Tugendhat] doesn’t want to give up his seat quite so quickly.”
Tory MP Alicia Kearns asks why China has not faced any repercussions from UK over spying case
At the end of the statement Alicia Kearns, the Tory MP who was one of the targets of the alleged spying operation (she employed Christopher Cash – see 9.39am), used a point of order to complain about the government’s failure to address some questions.
She said she wanted proof that, over a period of 14 months, the deputy national security adviser (DSNA) at no point spoke to ministers or the national security adviser about the case.
She asked why, when told the case was about to collapse, the PM did nothing.
And she asked why “to this day there have been no repercussions for the Chinese Communist party despite the government in power having every tool in their box to make clear that we will protect this house, this democracy and this country”.
Asked why Dan Jarvis, the security minister, told MPs on Monday that Jonathan Powell, the PM’s national security adviser, was not linked to the pro-China 48 Group, when until recently he was listed on its website as a fellow, Ward said Powell “was not involved in any part of this”.
Kieran Mullan (Con) asked why wording from the Labour manifesto was included in the final witness statement.
Ward said that was there to provide “wider context”. But that wording was provided by the DNSA, without involvement from ministers or political advisers.
Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, asked if the government regards China as a national security threat.
Ward said the evidence shows that China poses a threat multiple times.
Nick Timothy (Con) said the PM claimed that the relevant evidence related to the last government’s China policy. But the evidence was changed to reflect the current govermnment’s policy. He said this showed what the PM told MPs was wrong.
Ward rejected that. He said there was no political intererence in the evidence.
Richard Foord (Lib Dem) asked why the government did not request sight of the DNSA’s witness statements. He accused the government of delegating responsibility and accountability to a civil servant.
Ward said the DNSA did set out the threat posed by China.
