MI5 disrupted a plot from China against the UK as recently as last week, the spy agency’s head Ken McCallum said, as he expressed frustration at the collapse of a trial of two alleged spies.
“We intervened operationally just in the last week,” McCallum said in an annual speech on threats to the UK at MI5’s headquarters in London on Thursday, declining to give further details of the plot.
The i Paper understands the attack was not directed against Parliament.
His speech comes as Sir Keir Starmer is facing further questions over a collapsed China spying case after witness statements said Beijing is carrying out “large scale espionage” against the UK.
In his speech and in a question-and-answer session McCallum set out the threat to the UK from China, as well as terrorism and from other nations such as Russia and Iran – revealing there were 20 potentially lethal plots from the latter last year.
“Do Chinese state actors present a UK national security threat? And the answer is, of course, yes, they do, every day,” he said. But he the judgment on the overall balance of UK bilateral foreign policy relationships with China is “a matter for government.”
“Of course, I am frustrated when opportunities to prosecute national security threatening activity are not followed through, for whatever reason,” McCallum added.
“I would remind you all that, in the particular case I am sure you all have in your mind, the activity was disrupted. MI5’s job distinctively is to detect and disrupt the threat to UK national security and I’m pleased with how my teams have been doing that,” he added.
Unusual step of backing security advisor
His comments come amid in the ongoing row over the collapse of a trial of two men accused of spying for China. Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry – who have both consistently maintained their innocence – were charged under the Official Secrets Act in April 2024.
The Conservatives have accused the Government of allowing the case to collapse to avoid jeopardising economic relations with China, a claim denied by Starmer’s administration, which blames the previous Tory regime who were in charge when Collins sent his first evidence statement.
Last week, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the case collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the Government referring to China as a national security threat
On Wednesday the prime minister took the unusual step of ordering the publication of three statements by Deputy National Security adviser Matthew Collins, in a bid to clear up a row over why the trial failed.
The documents released late Wednesday make clear Beijing is carrying out spying operations against the UK, raising further questions for the CPS and ministers about why the prosecutions did not go ahead.
As the row deepened on Thursday, McCallum took the unusual step of backing Collins.
Christopher Berry (left) and former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash. PA Wire Photographer: PA“I have obviously worked for a number of years in adjacent roles alongside Matt Collins and I feel I do have to say I do consider him to be a man of high integrity and a professional of considerable quality.”
The head of the CPS Stephen Parkinson is also facing questions, with MPs suggesting there was sufficient evidence to put the case before a jury.
He is reported to have told MPs on the Foreign and Home Affairs Committees on Wednesday the evidence was “five per cent” short of what would have been required to stand a chance of getting a conviction.
But on Thursday ministers piled fresh pressure on Parkinson to explain why the case was dropped. Health minister Stephen Kinnock said the government was “deeply disappointed that the prosecution didn’t go ahead” and that Parkinson was “the best person to explain” why.
‘Biggest shift’ in mission since 9/11
In his wide-ranging keynote speech at MI5’s London HQ, McCallum said his organisation is operating in a “new era”, contending with near-record volumes of terrorist investigations and fast rising state threats, forcing the “biggest shift in MI5’s mission since 9/11.”
McCallum said that the UK-China relationship is by its nature complex, but that MI5’s role is not. “We detect and deal, robustly, with activity threatening UK national security,” he said.
MI5 has seen a 35 per cent increase in individuals under investigation for state threat activity present in the UK in the last year, he said.
The hostile operations range from espionage against MPs, universities and critical infrastructure, alongside “ugly methods” to commission Britons to engage on behalf of hostile states in sabotage, arson or surveillance in the UK.
“Try not to think too much just in terms of classic, card-carrying spies based out of embassies in the Le Carre mould,” McCallum said.
“What we often see is information, not all of which is a state secret but some of which will be industrial advantage, it will be university basic research, especially around technology, we see a whole host of ways in which Chinese state actors are able to collect information of value to them.
“The tricky thing is that there’s a whole series of dimensions where UK-China intercourse on a whole series of things is a healthy thing,” he added.
Since the start of 2020, MI5 and the police have together disrupted 19 late-stage attack plots and intervened in “many hundreds of developing threats,” McCallum said, revealing that the “aggregate scale of the terrorist threat remains huge” while his teams were mostly focused on individuals or small groups, rather than larger established networks.
Al Qaeda threat rising again
Even so, he highlighted how terrorist networks Al Qaeda and Islamic State are growing again “becoming more ambitious, taking advantage of instability overseas to gain firmer footholds” and both directly encouraging and indirectly inciting would-be attackers in the West.
In a wide-ranging speech taking in the threats from China, Iran and Russia McCallum also warned would-be “proxy” actors – such as the three Bulgarians convicted in May for malign activities in the UK on behalf of Russia – that they are viewed by Moscow as disposable.
He warned would-be operatives tempted to serve Russia that “when you’re caught, you’ll be abandoned” and “ghosted on payday.”
McCallum also revealed MI5 has tracked more than twenty potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in the last year.
square SPYING ExclusiveGovernment faces inquiry over two alleged Chinese spies in Westminster
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He said his agents face challenges identifying the motivation and ideology of suspects because online radicalisation can blur motives making it hard “to tell in the immediate aftermath of an appalling violent crime whether the incident is terrorist or state directed,” or not related to national security at all but driven by a personal grievance or mental ill health.
One in five of the 232 terrorism arrests last year were children under 17. He announced that the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre is now home to the Interventions Centre of Expertise – a new multi-agency team with an ambition to manage complex cases involving adolescents, mental ill health or other complex risks.
He said MI5 is using AI to help identify guns in piles of photographs or find incriminating phrases in suspects’ communications. But he also warned that while he is a “tech optimist” his organisation is “thinking deeply” about the potential threats AI could bring.
Child terrorists a growing problem
One in five of the 232 terrorism arrests last year were children under 17, Ken McCallum revealed.
The MI5 chief announced that the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in London is now home to the Interventions Centre of Expertise, a new multi-agency team aiming to manage complex cases involving adolescents, mental ill health or other complex risks.
But, he added, his agents are keen not to get involved in dealing with children and the new agency is not a replacement for the Prevent Programme which aims to intervene in radicalisation of young people.
“When it comes to individuals under the age of 17, what I’ve been trying to describe this morning is, in effect, MI5 not wanting to get involved more than is absolutely unavoidable.
“We are a finite-capacity organisation, and we are probably not the most appropriate wing of the state to be dealing with developing risks that are brewing inside a small but sad number of our young people.
“We would far rather that interventions from other parts of the public service find ways of deflecting them so that they don’t require the very specific and particular toolkits that we and counter-terrorism policing together operate.
“So, the intervention centre of expertise is our attempt to stitch together an innovative wider team where others who are far more appropriately placed than a secret national security organisation can use their tools and expertise to help avoid more young people coming to, as it were, MI5’s end of the spectrum,” he added.
Prevent is a Government-led, multi-agency scheme aiming to rehabilitate and disengage those who are already involved in terrorism, and safeguard communities from threats. Individuals referred from schools and other safeguarding bodies are subject to a “gateway assessment”, made by specialist police officers to determine whether there are reasonable grounds to suspect a person is “susceptible to becoming a terrorist or supporting terrorism”.
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