The New Statesman.

Did Kirstarmer's government quashed the trial of suspected spies to protect the UK's relationship with China?

I'm Olly Doug Moore and this is the New Statesman podcast.

With me in the studio is George Eaton, who's been reporting on the anger in Westminster

over the dismissal of the so-called China spy case, and down the line from Washington, our resident China expert,

Katie Stallard, who can give us the global picture. Hello, both of you. Hello, George. Hi, Katie.

Hello. George, this is a story about espionage. It should be instantly exciting,

but it's actually been surprisingly tricky to get a handle on.

I mean, would you be able to give us a kind of cliff notes version, what's happened? Why has this

proved so controversial? What is the China spy case affair? That's right. So it dates back over

several years. Two men, Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher to Alicia Kearns, a former chair of the Foreign Affairs Selects Committee and Christopher Berry.

They were arrested under the official secrets acts in 2023, accused of spying on behalf of China.

They deny the charges.

They were then charged in 2024.

That case was set to go to trial and essentially the prosecution collapsed.

And there's now future political row in Westminster, essentially, the conservatives accusing

the government of engineering that for political purposes

and Stama and his ministers adamantly denying that.

Like you said, it's worth clarifying Cash and Berry both consistently deny any wrongdoing.

But they're accused of essentially sort of collating information about the British political scene,

political figures, and that being sent on to sort of a senior figure in the Chinese Communist Party.

Is that right?

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