MPs to hold formal inquiry into China spy case as top Tory slams lack of 'democracy' and calls for dissolution of Parliament

Addressing Cabinet Office minister Chris Ward, he said: "We will be holding this inquiry as soon as we possibly can, and will he give his commitment that we will have access to ministers and civil servants or whoever we wish to come before us."

Mr Ward insisted the Government wanted to be as transparent as possible.

He said: "I’ll come back to him on this precise mechanism of how we do that, but I’m sure people will be made available to his committee."

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the case against Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry in September after deeming the evidence did not show China was a threat to national security.

Both men, who deny wrongdoing, had been accused of passing secrets to China.

Former security minister Tom Tugendhat suggested that if "the bureaucrats are in charge of everything", then the UK "isn’t a democracy any more" and questioned why the Government did not do "everything" in its power to secure the prosecution of the pair.

A spokesman from Downing Street said it would have been "absurd" for the Prime Minister to step in after being told the China spy case was going to collapse.

The spokesman 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."

The Government published 18 pages of evidence connected with the now-collapsed case yesterday evening after Sir Keir Starmer pledged to do so at Prime Minister's Questions.

The evidence included witness statements provided to prosecutors by Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins, including one submitted in 2023 and another two statements filed earlier this year.

Labour minister Stephen Kinnock told GB News Sir Keir had shown "huge amounts of transparency" in releasing the statements.

He said: "There are Government processes and protocols around this, and of course, we have to be very careful about the information that gets released, because that can end up compromising our national security, which would obviously not be the right thing to do.

"The Government and the Prime Minister have shown huge amounts of transparency by publishing these three witness statements.

"And what I think they clearly show is the position of the Government, indeed, from the Conservative to Labour transition, the broad position has remained the same, which is that you can't boil the relationship with China down to one word of it being an enemy."

Concluding one of the witness statements, Mr Collins wrote: "For the reasons given above, it is my assessment that the suspects’ alleged activities were prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK, and the information and material passed would be directly or indirectly useful to the Chinese state."

He also wrote it was "important to emphasise however, that the UK Government is committed to pursuing a positive relationship with China to strengthen understanding, cooperation and stability".

Kemi Badenoch has accused the Government of submitting a "lovely statement about how great China was".

Responding to the release of the Deputy National Security Adviser's witness statements, the Tory leader said: "They should have provided the evidence to the CPS that showed that China was a threat.

"We had loads of evidence. We’ve made repeated statements about that.

"There are examples that they could have pointed to about China hacking into Whitehall government systems. They did not provide any of that.

"Instead, what they provided was a lovely statement about how great China was. That’s an embarrassment."

She accused Sir Keir's administration of trying to "blame the last Government" but "it’s failing, and the witness statement is proving that what they have done has misled Parliament".

Mrs Badenoch added: "They were informed that the spy case was collapsing.

"They could have intervened to stop it. They didn’t, because they’re too weak to stand up to China."

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