One of two men arrested today accused of spying for China is the public school-educated son of a GP who co-founded an influential policy group with security minister Tom Tugendhat.
Christopher Cash, 29 – a Tory parliamentary researcher and China specialist – has been charged for an offence under the Official Secrets Act alongside Christopher Berry, 32.
Cash, who insists he is ‘completely innocent’, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Edinburgh and attended £5,000-a-term George Watson’s College – where he was head of house – before studying History at the University of St Andrews.
A ‘skilled networker’, he was active on the Westminster social scene and used a dating app. He made several attempts in 2022 to set up a date with a political journalist, according to reports.
He has links to several senior Tory MPs, and set up the China Research Group alongside China hawk Mr Tugendhat. He also had links to Alice Kearns, another China critic.
Cash previously issued a statement through the law firm Birnberg Peirce, in which he said: ‘I feel forced to respond to the media accusations that I am a ”Chinese spy”.
‘It is wrong that I should be obliged to make any form of public comment on the misreporting that has taken place.
‘However, given what has been reported, it is vital that it is known that I am completely innocent. I have spent my career to date trying to educate others about the challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist Party.
‘To do what has been claimed against me in extravagant news reporting would be against everything I stand for.’
Cash, who has been described by people who know him as ‘very knowledgeable, very authoritative, very bright guy’, spent two years teaching English at an international school in Hangzhou, near Shanghai.
He then did a masters in China before starting work in Parliament in 2021.
Colleagues said there was shock when he vanished from Westminster, where he was at the heart of a social scene and organised bi-monthly pub drinks for a ‘Whitehall crowd of quite young people interested in China’.
Read More: Parliamentary researcher, 29, is charged with spying for China