A former senior British official says China poses a threat to Britain’s national security

Lord Mark Sedwill, the UK’s former national security adviser, has piled pressure on Sir Keir Starmer over the collapsed Chinese spying case by saying Beijing “of course” poses a direct threat to national security.

Sidwell said he was “really puzzled” by the trial of Christopher Perry and Christopher Cash, who are accused of leaking secrets to… Chinacollapsed last month. Both men categorically denied these accusations.

Sidwell said Crisis room Podcast: “The reality is that China of course poses a national security threat to the UK directly, through cyber, through espionage and so on.”

Prosecutors said this week that the trial collapsed because… government He was refusing to provide a witness to describe China as a “threat to the UK’s national security”.

The prime minister said the previous government did not designate Beijing as an enemy at the time of the alleged crimes between 2021 and 2023.

British prosecutors accused Cash, 30, a former parliamentary researcher at Westminster, and Perry, 33, a teacher who worked in China, of spying on parliamentarians at Westminster for China.

Both men have always denied any wrongdoing and said the collapse of the case proved their innocence.

Starmer will come under fresh pressure to explain the background to the case when Parliament returns from its conference recess on Monday.

Speaking at a press conference in Mumbai on Thursday, Starmer insisted: “I can be absolutely clear, no ministers have been involved in any of the decisions since this government took over, in relation to the evidence presented before the court on this issue.

“The evidence was the evidence as it was at the time; that is the only relevant evidence, and that evidence was the situation as it was under the last government, the Conservative government, and not under this government.”

The saga has put the spotlight on Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, who over his long career has helped solve some of the world’s most challenging foreign policy problems: from helping bring peace in Northern Ireland to separating rival Libyan warlords.

Critics believe Powell, who was appointed by the Labor government last November, is behind a pattern of behavior that has seen ministers tone down their public criticism of China at a time when Starmer is keen to boost trade and investment.

Powell, who served as Tony Blair’s chief of staff in the last Labor government, played a crucial role in shaping the UK’s approach to the complex issue of engagement with China.

Prosecutors He said The UK government did not provide evidence that China was a threat to British national security at the time of the alleged crimes, prompting it to drop the case against British nationals.

This led to a row between Powell and the Home Office shortly before prosecutors announced they were dropping the case last month, the Financial Times reported, although the Cabinet Office denied it had made any “decisions about the content of any evidence.”

The Cabinet Office added: “He also had no role in any decisions on the substance of the case itself.”

As a political appointee, Powell was not permitted to instruct civilian staff, including Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Collins, who was scheduled to give evidence to the government before the case collapsed.

But Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader and a prominent China hawk, said Powell was “furious” in the saga over the decision to drop the charges.

“Labour has gone from being skeptical about China, including concern about genocide (allegations against Uyghurs in Xinjiang), to becoming completely despondent about it,” he said, claiming that the softening of the government’s stance coincided with Powell’s appointment as the UK’s national security adviser.

Before joining Starmer’s government, Powell made multiple trips to China through the Inter Mediate charity, which aims to leverage his experience to help resolve conflicts.

It was hosted by the Grandview Foundation, a think tank whose state affiliations are unclear, and held sessions with organizations under the direct supervision of the Communist Party’s Domestic and Foreign Influence Organization and the United Front Work Department in Beijing.

Since joining the UK government in November 2024, Powell has also attended a joint event in London between Inter Mediate and Grandview to discuss topics such as “strategic stability” and relations with the US, which was held in April, according to research by Chung Ching-kwong, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance’s senior analyst on China.

Before its election, Labor pledged in its manifesto that it would conduct a “review of our bilateral relations” with China to “understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by China.”

But the full audit of China was never published, but was instead included in a broader national security strategy in June, which Powell oversaw.

She said the UK should seek a “trade and investment relationship” with China while at the same time warning that there had been an increase “in recent years” in Chinese activity to undermine democracy in the UK.

A request by Dame Emily Thornberry, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, for MPs to review the scrutiny of China in a secure reading room was never granted.

British officials claimed they could not fully characterize China as a national security threat as part of the evidence, as this was not the official position of the last Conservative government or the Starmer administration. “You can only prosecute someone on the basis of the situation they were in at the time,” Starmer said on Thursday.

Powell declined to comment, but his supporters noted that he had been dealing with China since the Hong Kong negotiations began under Margaret Thatcher in 1983, when he worked at the Foreign Office, and was not naive about the threat.

“If you are suggesting that Britain or officials like Jonathan are not talking to the Chinese, you are limiting yourself to irrelevance,” one diplomat said.

For more than a decade, successive Conservative and Labor governments have felt compelled by economic reality to move closer to Beijing, while repeatedly pressing down on human rights abuses in Xinjiang and suppression of civil liberties in Hong Kong.

David Cameron, the former Conservative prime minister, opined that since every Western country would eventually end up doing business with China, it would be better to be “all in” with Beijing, ushering in what both sides described as a “golden age” in relations.

The high point of this approach came in 2015 when the Conservative Party chancellor, George Osborne, visited Xinjiang – a highly unusual visit by a foreign politician – even as the local Uyghur Muslim population was being repressed.

The “Golden Age” was short-lived. In 2016, Theresa May became Conservative Prime Minister, promising a more restrictive approach to foreign takeovers.

But Labor is once again trying to improve relations, and has come up with a formula that describes China as a “challenge” and repeatedly says its goal is to “cooperate where we can and challenge where we must.”