China spying a daily threat to UK, warns MI5 chief

According to Sir Ken McCallum, Chinese state operatives pose a constant national security threat to the United Kingdom. In a speech, he said that MI5 had intervened operationally to undermine Chinese activity of national security concern in the last week. McCallum, who was speaking out against the demise of a lawsuit involving suspected intelligence operations in the United Kingdom, said MI5 had disrupted suspected spying in the UK, and that it had been frustrating if charges fell through. The government and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are among those concerned about the case's demise.

The CPS dismissed the lawsuit last month after finding that the facts did not show that China was not a threat to national security. However, witness statements from UK deputy national security advisor Matthew Collins, who was released late Wednesday, show that the Chinese are conducting intelligence operations against the UK, prompting concerns for the government and the CPS as to why the investigations did not proceed. China was

the biggest state-based threat to the country's economic stability,

he wrote in the documents, and he said in the papers that it was large espionage against the United Kingdom. Conservatives have accused the government of allowing the case to fall apart in order to prevent jeopardizing economic relations with China. The government has firmly denied this, blaming the previous Tory government, who were in charge when Mr Collins gave his first evidence statement. Stephen Parkinson, the CPS's chief, is also on the firing line, with MPs arguing that there is ample evidence to present the lawsuit before a jury. He is said to have told senior MPs on Wednesday that the facts were 5 less than what would have been expected to guarantee a conviction. Matt Western, Labour MP and Chair of the National Security Strategy, was greeted by senior MPs and peers that he was investigating the case's demise. State risks, mainly from Russia, China, and Iran, are increasing, according to Ken McCallum, who said them in his address. The number of individuals it has been investigating has increased by 35% in the last year. He twice expressed sympathy to the victims of the recent attack at a Manchester synagogue on terrorism. MI5 and the police had disrupted 19 late-stage attack plans this year, disrupting 19 late stage attack plans and intervening in hundreds of new threats, according to he. Mr Collins outlines the case against former parliament researcher Christopher Cash, 30, and scholar Christopher Berry, 33, in the first witness statement, sent in December 2023. The two are accused of working with a Chinese Communist Party chief who was deputy head of the Central National Security Commission, which was chaired by President Xi Jinping. Mr Cash is accused of telling Mr Berry: You're in spy territory now. Both men deny any wrongdoing. China's intelligence service, according to Mr Collins' second witness address, the UK's economic growth and resilience are jeopardizing

the country's continued growth and stability. In August, a third witness statement issued in August this year reiterated the UK's assessment of the threat posed by China. However, Labour's two speeches made it clear that the government was

committed to fostering a positive economic relationship with China.

China's foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said,

China is very clear: we firmly oppose peddling China spy stories and vilifying China.

Who the hell's side are you on? former Security Minister Tom Tugendhat, for whom Mr Cash was a political analyst, asked the government in a Commons debate, asked him.

May I begin by saying very briefly how this feels,

Tory MP Ed Miliband said. My home has been broken into. My files have been ransacked. Somebody has been recruited into my office by a hostile state, and both sides are playing politics with it.

He accused the government of being obsessed with following the correct procedure rather than doing everything possible to ensure the trial works.

Well, who's side is it on? says the narrator.He ordered Ward, who had been given the job of defending the government. Ward said he fully understood how the case had personally impacted Tugendhat, but that

no interference with the CPS in the course of this

and every attempt to help their case would be made to help them. Mr Cash said in a tweet on Wednesday evening that he had been placed in 'impossible situation' because he hadn't

had the sunshine of a public trial to demonstrate my innocence.

The remarks that have been made public are completely devoid of the context in which they would have been given at trial,he explained.While Mr Berry has previously denied espionage for China, he hasn't reported since the day the investigation was concluded.

Mr Collins' third statement, according to Alicia Kearns, who previously worked with Mr Cash as a political analyst, includes language about China similar to that in Labour's election manifesto last year. Both the witness statement and the manifesto state,

We will co-operate where we can, compete where we must, and protest where we should not.

There's a direct lift from the Labour Party manifesto,Kearns said.It's very difficult to believe there was no political interference and that a public servant would have felt the desire to do so. But she also stated that there had beenmisleading discussion

about whether China was deemed a threat to national security at the time of the alleged 2023 offences.

The Crown Prosecution Service should have continued with this,Kearns said.The case law requires a jury to determine whether China is or could be a threat to our country,

she said. When he delivered his third witness statement in August 2025, Mr Collins believed there were enough reasons for the charges to proceed. According to a government source, he referred to

the growing Chinese espionage threat to the UK" as an example of why he believed enough to satisfy the CPS's threshold for prosecution. The CPS called Mr Collins after his first witness statement to ask for more information on the threat posed by China, but it was also understood that the official must not say in subsequent statements in order to reach the CPS's threshold.

In April 2024, when the Conservatives were in power, Mr Cash and Mr Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act. Between December 2021 and February 2023, they were accused of gathering and delivering reports prejudicial to the state's safety and interests. The trial was dismissed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat, according to the prosecutor of public prosecutions. Although there were ample evidence when the charges were first brought against the two men, the two guys' trial was a predecessor set by another spy case earlier this year, it would have been classified as a threat to national security at the time of the suspected crimes, according to Mr. Calum Miller, a Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, said the witness statements raised yet more unanswered questions, adding: "We obviously need a statutory public inquiry to get to the bottom of this whole fiasco.

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