MI5 chief says China is a security threat to UK as officials trade blame
over spy case collapse
[October 17, 2025]
By JILL LAWLESS
LONDON (AP) — China poses a daily threat to Britain’s security, the head
of the country's domestic intelligence agency said Thursday, remarks
that step up pressure on authorities to explain why the prosecution of
two men charged with spying for Beijing collapsed just before they were
due to stand trial.
The government, prosecutors and opposition politicians, who were in
power until last year, have traded blame over the failed criminal case
as the United Kingdom tries to balance between challenging and engaging
with the Asian superpower.
“Do Chinese state actors present a U.K. national security threat? The
answer is of course yes they do, every day,” MI5 Director-General Ken
McCallum told reporters during a rare public appearance. He said his
agency had intervened to stop a threat from Beijing as recently as the
past week.
McCallum said Beijing-backed meddling has included cyberespionage,
stealing technology secrets and “efforts to interfere covertly in U.K.
public life.”
China spying allegations
Academic Christopher Berry and parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash
were charged last year with providing information or documents to China
that could be “prejudicial to the safety or interests” of the U.K.
Then, last month, prosecutors dropped the charges.
Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson pointed at the
government, saying officials refused to testify under oath that China
was a threat to national security at the time of the alleged offenses,
between 2021 and 2023.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer denies interfering, and late Wednesday the
government published witness statements submitted by Deputy National
Security Adviser Matthew Collins describing China as “the biggest
state-based threat to the U.K.’s economic security” and saying Beijing’s
espionage activities “harm the interests and security of the U.K.”
McCallum called Britain’s relationship with China a “complex” mix of
risk and opportunity, and said MI5 agents “detect and deal, robustly,
with activity threatening U.K. national security.”
“Of course I am frustrated when opportunities to prosecute national
security-threatening activity are not followed through for whatever
reason,” he said, but added that prosecution decisions were out of MI5’s
hands.
Cash and Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act, a
century-old statute that covers spying for countries deemed enemies of
the U.K. It has since been replaced by new national security
legislation.
The two men deny wrongdoing, and the Chinese Embassy on Thursday called
the allegations “pure fabrication and malicious slander.”
“China never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs,” an
embassy spokesperson said.
British intelligence authorities have ratcheted up warnings about
Beijing’s covert activities, and Parliament’s Intelligence and Security
Committee labeled Beijing a “strategic threat” in 2023.
Starmer's center-left Labour Party government has tried cautiously to
reset ties with Beijing after years of frosty relations over spying
allegations, human rights concerns, China’s support for Russia in the
Ukraine war and a crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong.
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Director General of MI5, the UK's Security Service, Ken McCallum,
delivers the annual Director General's Speech at Thames House, the
headquarters of the UK's Security Service in London on Thursday
Oct.r 16, 2025. (Jonathan Brady /PA via AP)
The spying controversy erupted as British officials consider China's
application to build a huge new embassy near the Tower of London
that would be the biggest diplomatic complex in Europe. Critics say
its scale and central location bring heightened risks of spying and
sabotage.
On Thursday the government postponed the deadline for a final
decision from Oct. 21 until Dec. 10.
Russia and Iran
In his annual speech outlining major threats to the U.K., McCallum
painted a stark picture, saying the U.K. faces “multiple overlapping
threats on an unprecedented scale” from both terror groups and
states. He said China is one of the “big three” state threats, along
with the more reckless Russia and Iran.
“State threats are escalating,” he said, with a 35% increase in the
past year in the number of people MI5 is investigating for
espionage.
He alleged that Russia and Iran are increasingly using “ugly
methods,” including “surveillance sabotage, arson or physical
violence.”
“Russia is committed to causing havoc and destruction,” he said. “In
the last year, we and the police have disrupted a steady stream of
surveillance plots with hostile intent aimed at individuals Russian
leaders perceive as their enemies.”
He said Tehran is also plotting to injure and kill its enemies on
British soil, with more than 20 “potentially lethal Iran-backed
plots” disrupted in the past 12 months.
AI risks
The U.K.’s official terror threat level stands at “substantial,”
meaning an attack is likely, and McCallum said MI5 has disrupted 19
late-stage attack plots since 2020.
He said attacks increasingly tend to come from small groups or
individuals rather than broad networks, and suspects are getting
younger, with one in five of those arrested last year under the age
of 17.
Some plotters are motivated by al-Qaida and the Islamic State group
– which are “once again becoming more ambitious” – and others by
extreme right-wing ideology, he said. Still others reflect a messy
stew of motivations bred in “squalid corners of the internet.”
The spy chief also said MI5 was looking at potential threats from
out-of-control AI.
“Artificial intelligence may never ‘mean’ us harm,” he said. “But it
would be reckless to ignore the potential for it to cause harm.”
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