A parliamentary aide accused of passing secrets to Beijing has been charged under the Official Secrets Act, along with another British man who also taught in China.
Chris Cash, 29, and Christopher Berry, 32, will appear at Westminster magistrates’ court on Friday to face accusations of providing prejudicial information to a foreign state.
Cash is the former director of an influential China policy group and previously taught English in Hangzhou, eastern China, near Shanghai. Berry, from Witney, Oxfordshire, has taught economics and English in the region. In a YouTube video posted online two years ago, he extols the virtues of Zhejiang province’s picturesque lake. On an online blog Berry, who now works in digital marketing, described a typical day as a teacher in China.
The pair are accused of collecting and passing on information that might be useful to an enemy. Cash was closely linked with UK Minister of State for Security Tom Tugendhat when he was a backbencher. It is understood they had not met since the MP was made security minister. Cash was also employed as a researcher by Alicia Kearns, chairwoman of the Commons foreign affairs select committee.
When Cash and Berry were arrested last March, a handful of ministers were informed, but details of the alleged security breach were not made public until The Sunday Times broke the story in September. The Times was the only newspaper to name Cash before he was charged yesterday (Monday) and prosecutors confirmed his identity.
Nick Price, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s special crime and counterterrorism division, said the two men were “charged with providing prejudicial information to a foreign state, China, and will appear at Westminster magistrates’ court on Friday, April 26. Criminal proceedings against the defendants are active. No one should report, comment or share information online which could in any way prejudice their right to a fair trial.”
Cash, who grew up in Edinburgh, is charged with breaching the 1911 Official Secrets Act (Section 1) between January 2022 and February last year. The allegations involve obtaining, collecting, recording, publishing or communicating notes, documents or information that might be, or were intended to be, directly or indirectly useful to an enemy. Berry is accused of committing the same offence between December 2021 and February 2023.
Cash, the son of a GP, went to the fee-paying George Watson’s College in Edinburgh before studying at the University of St Andrews. He taught for two years in China before returning to Britain to study for an MSc in China and globalisation at King’s College London.
He then secured a job as a researcher for the China Research Group, an influential group of MPs who have taken a generally critical position on China.
Neighbours said that Berry had met his Chinese wife when teaching there and that they had a young child.
Berry’s mother works for a local housing association and his father for a museum. A family member, believed to be Berry’s mother, declined to comment at their home.
A neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: “It must be a mistake. Bizarre. It’s laughable. He moved back over here with his wife and his son. I believe he went over to teach English as a foreign language, met her over there and stayed. They seem lovely.”
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London said it was “completely fabricated and nothing but malicious slander” to suggest that Beijing was suspected of “stealing British intelligence. We firmly oppose it and urge the UK side to stop anti-China political manipulation and stop putting on such self-staged political farce.”
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