The truth about Chinese espionage
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Shipman's bombshell cover piece for the magazine this week explains how the collapsed spy trial blew up in the government’s face. As well as raising ‘serious questions’ about Keir Starmer’s judgment and Jonathan Powell’s role, ‘the affair reveals a Whitehall tendency to cover up the gory details of foreign spying in the UK’. According to Tim, four ‘highly credible sources in the upper echelons of the last government… have revealed that far worse scandals have been hushed up’. One, involving Russia, was suppressed ‘to avoid embarrassing a former prime minister’. The ‘most catastrophic breach’ saw China purchase a company that controlled a data hub used by Whitehall departments – thereby enabling Beijing to steal lots of sensitive and even highly classified information. This makes the abandonment of the Cash/Berry case all the odder. Tim discusses, with James Heale.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there. I'm off this week. |
| 0:04.6 | Apparently we're more productive at work after a good holiday. |
| 0:12.1 | So I'm counting this Caribbean rum distillery tour as professional development. |
| 0:22.4 | Yours calling. |
| 0:24.2 | Take your holiday as seriously as British Airways Holidays Take Your Holiday. |
| 0:29.0 | Atoll protected. |
| 0:41.1 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Hill and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman, |
| 0:45.6 | The Spectator's political editor. Now, Tim, the China spying story. Tell us what has happened overnight. |
| 0:51.3 | And this morning we've had an urgent question from Neil O'Brien to the government on latest developments. |
| 0:55.6 | What's happened? Well, as Kirsteirstama pledged at Prime Minister's questions yesterday, |
| 1:02.4 | he said, I will release the evidence that we sent to the CPS on this prospective trial of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry. |
| 1:05.1 | He said to the House of Commons in PMQs that this would show that they had to adhere to the policies of the previous |
| 1:13.0 | Conservative government in that evidence, because that is when the alleged offences took |
| 1:17.4 | place. But what the evidence shows is slightly different from that. They've now published it. |
| 1:22.2 | First of all, it shows some really quite detailed information about what Cash and Berry are accused of. |
| 1:29.7 | It says that Barry was in touch with a very senior person in the administration, |
| 1:35.0 | someone who is regarded as one of the four or five most important people in China, |
| 1:39.2 | a chief of staff to Xi Jinping. |
| 1:42.2 | So that's a very odd that someone at Berry's level was in touch with those sort |
| 1:48.4 | of people. |
| 1:49.2 | I mean, I suspect this British ambassador in Beijing would have been delighted to have |
| 1:52.4 | that level of access. |
... |
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