No 10 says Badenoch’s claim PM should have intervened to stop China spy trial collapsing ‘absurd’ – as it happened | Politics
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- October 16, 2025
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Joint committee on national security strategy to hold inquiry into collapse of China spy trial, MPs told
Matt Western, the Labour chair of the joint committee on national security strategy, said that his commitee met this morning and has decided to hold a formal inquiry into this.
He said the chairs of the home affairs committee, the foreign affairs committee and the justice committee were among the committee’s members.
He asked for an assurance that the inquiry would have access to ministers and officials.
Ward said the government welcomed parliamentary scrutiny. He said he was sure witnesses would be made available to the committee.
Key events
Afternoon summary
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Zack Polanski says he would welcome Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana joining Green party
Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has said he would welcome Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana joining his party.
Corbyn and Sultana are launching their own leftwing party, provisionally called Your Party. But, in an interview for the News Agents podcast, asked if he would welcome them into his party, he replied:
Yes, absolutely. I need to caveat that it’s not my decision. That’s up to the party.
Polanski said he did not think the Greens needed defections from MPs because, he said, the party has “clearly got the energy and momentum anyway”. This week its membership passed 100,000 for the first time.
But, when asked if he was talking to Labour MPs who might want to defect, he claimed he was.
The Greens are also celebrating a Find Out Now poll that puts them level pegging with Labour, with both parties on 15% (behind the Conservatives on 17% and Reform UK on 32%).
(On Bluesky Sam Freedman has a good thread explaining why Reform and the Greens do particularly well in Find Out Now polls because of the methodology the firm uses.)
Polanski is leader of the Green party of England and Wales. Today the Scottish Greens said their membership has risen by 10% in the last six months, taking it to 8,279, its highest level since 2016.
A reader asks:
Do you know if evidence to the Covid enquiry is given under oath? I would pay good money to see that inveterate liar perjure himself.
Yes, evidence to the Covid inquiry is given on oath.
Thornberry says DPP failed to give convincing explanation as to why spy prosecution dropped in private meeting with MPs
Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, was one of the select committee chairs who attended a meeting with Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, about the China spy case yesterday. She said, even after listening to Parkinson’s explanation, she was still “bewildered” as to why the CPS dropped the case.
Parkinson told the MPs that the CPS was 5% short of the evidence it needed. Thornberry said that, when the MPs asked him if the government knew about this problem, he replied: “Well, they must have known because we kept asking for it.”
She told the programme that, if the problem was persuading a jury that China was a threat to national interest, the CPS should just have put the evidence to a court. She said she was “quite sure” a jury would have accepted China was a threat.
She went on:
If the stumbling block was really, was China a threat to national security, a) I don’t understand why the DPP thought that he had any problem proving that and b) I can’ see that the jury would have had any problem deciding that China was a threat. I really understand why they were being so pusillanimous about it.
Asked to confirm she wasn’t impressed by Parkinson, she said she “really wasn’t impressed by the reasons that they gave us”.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has accused the government of including “a lovely statement about how great China was” in its evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service for the spy trial that was shelved.
Speaking to reporters today about the witness statements released last night (see 9.04am), she 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.
This statement is so misleading as to make one wonder whether Badenoch has even read the witness statements. The second and third include explicit references to government and official computer systems being hacked by the Chinese. And, although those documents both refer to the UK wanting a “positive” economic relationship with China, there is nothing in them that could be described as “lovely” praise for China.
Bridget Phillipson says education can help children at risk from ‘darker forces’ online ripping communities apart
Richard Adams
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is warning that “forgotten” children are vulnerable to “darker forces” pushing poison online and ripping apart communities unless they can be given greater hope through education.
Phillipson told a conference that England’s school system was failing too many children, including those from disadvantaged families, with special needs or the bright but bored, leaving many of them “adrift, disconnected from success, disengaged from school”. In her speech Phillipson said:
They feel forgotten. You’ll know who I mean. The boy who skulks through your corridors, when he turns up for school at all. You’ll recognise the slouching sense of dejection. He sees the path to a good life narrowing by the day.
That boy’s spending night after night alone in his bedroom. Vulnerable to the darker forces that seek him out online, and whisper poison in his ear
Turning him away from the free and fair society we seek to build. Video by video. Reel by reel. Meme by meme.
This is how the fabric of our communities begins to rip. Bit by bit. Because when that young person is offered not opportunity but excuses. He feels not supported but betrayed. He turns not to aspiration but anger.
Speaking to journalists at the Confederation of School Trusts conference in Birmingham, Phillipson added:
If young people are disengaged from education, and spending all of their time [online] being pumped extremist material, or material that’s likely to radicalise, then we know the antidote is that school is an important protective factor against that.
If they’re in school, they are regularly getting support from staff but also developing the skills that they need to really challenge what they see, to think critically about what’s in front of them.
Disengagement from education and how that is connected to accessing material online is causing tension in our communities, and it’s something that we have to address.
Full text of Starmer’s response to Badenoch over China spy case
Here is Keir Starmer’s response to Kemi Badenoch’s letter about the China spy case in full. (See 1.32pm.) He claims her version was full of “inaccuracies and misleading assertions”.
Boris Johnson to give evidence to Covid inquiry next Tuesday
Boris Johnson, the former PM, will give evidence to the Covid inquiry next week, it has been announced. He will be appearing on Tuesday morning, in one of the hearings for the inquiry module looking at the impact of the pandemic on children and young people. It will the first time he has given evidence in person since a two-day witness session in December 2023, focusing on decision making and governance.
Matthew Scott, a criminal barrister and legal blogger, is a rare voice speaking up for the CPS today. In a series of posts on social media, he argues that it was understandable why it did not want to try persuading a jury that China was an enemy when the government itself won’t use that language.
In defence of the CPS: the issue for the jury is whether China is an “enemy.” 3 witness statements saying it’s a threat to national security etc. None of the 3 use the word “enemy.”
Why not? It looks like a deliberate avoidance x3 of the word. If the government witness refuses to call China an “enemy,” I can see why the CPS may’ve thought it was likely that a jury would have refused to do so too.
At the very least it’s a point for a defence closing speech: “Members of the jury, even the prosecution witnesses refused 3 times to call China an “enemy.” And yet even though their own witnesses refuse to use that word, they are saying you must do so.”
Starmer says Badenoch ‘plainly wrong’ to imply last Tory government treated China as enemy
In his reply to Kemi Badenoch, Keir Starmer also said it was “simply untrue” to says that Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, intervened in the prosecution to say China could not be described as a threat. This claim has been widely made on the back of a Sunday Times report about Powell discussing the case at meeting in early September.
Starmer said:
There have been various reports alleging that, in a meeting in September, the national security adviser ruled that China could not be defined as a threat and took decisions relating to witnesses or evidence. That is simply untrue.
Starmer said Powell took part in routine discussions based on the assumption the case was going ahead. Powell was not involved in any decisions about evidence in the case, Starmer said.
He also said that Badenoch was “plainly wrong” when she implied that the last Conservative government had treated China as an enemy. He said:
To impliedly assert, as you do, that between 2021 and 2023 the policy of the then government was to treat China as an enemy within the meaning of the 1911 Act is plainly wrong.
MI5 chief ‘frustrated’ at failure to put men accused of spying for China on trial
Ken McCallum, the MI5 director general, has acknowledged his frustration at the failure to put on trial two Britons who had been accused of spying for China, in an apparent rebuke to prosecutors who dropped the high-profile case last month. Dan Sabbagh has the story.
Starmer defends his national security officials over China affair, saying he won’t stand for them being ‘unfairly blamed’
At the start of the week, Kemi Badenoch wrote an open letter to Keir Starmer containing six questions about the China spy affair.
In a reply to the Tory leader, Keir Starmer has restated his assertion that ministers and special advisers did not put pressure on witnesses, or seek to influence the trial.
He also said he would not stand for anyone being “unfairly blamed” – a comment aimed at attacks on Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, and Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser.
He said:
I can confirm that no minister or special adviser of this government placed any pressure on any witness that the CPS intended to call to trial, nor did they seek to influence the outcome of the trial in any other way.
Let me also say that I will not stand for anyone being unfairly blamed for this outcome.
I am confident that the deputy national security adviser, Matt Collins – a public servant of the highest calibre and integrity, who has made a significant impact on our national security – did everything possible within the constraints imposed by the previous government’s position on China.
Furthermore, the witness statements that we have now published show that the evidence he provided was in line with the then government’s publicly stated policy at the time.
Parliament’s joint committee on the national security strategy has now issued a statemetn confirming that it will hold an inquiry into the China spy case. (See 10.55am.) The committee includes the chairs of the foreign affairs, home affairs, justice, defence, international development, business and energy committees.
Matt Western, the committee chair, said:
Clearly there are still many questions yet to be answered by the government and the director of public prosecutions.
As the committee that scrutinises processes for national security decision-making, the JCNSS is the best forum for those questions.
We will be holding a formal inquiry as soon as we can and expect to hear evidence from the government and officials involved in these issues.
Hospice leaders welcome £80m funding for children’s hospices in England
An £80m boost for children’s hospices is a “significant first step” towards getting hospices on a stable footing, hospice leaders have said. As PA Media reports, the government has announced the new funding for children’s hospices in England, to be spread over three years.
Toby Porter, chief executive of Hospice UK, said:
This is a welcome and significant first step to placing the children’s hospice sector on a sustainable footing. The stability provided by a multi-year settlement will have a real impact on the care children’s hospices provide and the families they support.
No 10 says Badenoch’s claim PM should have intervened to stop China spy trial collapsing ‘absurd’
Downing Street has described Kemi Badenoch’s claim that he should have intervened in the China spy case to stop the prosecution collapsing as “absurd”.
Badenoch first made this argument yesterday, after No 10 said Keir Starmer was told the CPS was dropping the case two days before that was announced, and she repeated the claim today. (See 9.04am.)
Asked about Badenoch’s assertion at the No 10 lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson 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.
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