A man accused of attempting to hand over the personal details of the then defence secretary, Grant Shapps, to Russian intelligence officers has told a court he was actually trying to “expose” the agents.
Howard Phillips, 65, was charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service after passing a USB stick containing details relating to Shapps including his home address and the location of his private plane to undercover officers, who prosecutors say he believed to be Russian spies. He previously pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Opening his defence at Winchester crown court, Phillips said he was not acting against the UK when he allegedly leaked Shapps’s details but carrying out a secret plot to “trap” Russian spies.
Phillips, a retired insolvency worker from Harlow, Essex, told the court he was Jewish and hoped to pass information about the Russian spies to Israel, as he believed this would “benefit” the state.
He also told jurors that he first met Shapps, then his local MP in the constituency of Welwyn Hatfield, at a synagogue.
Jeremy Dein, representing Phillips, asked whether he had any “feelings about Russia” before he made contact with whom he presumed was the Russian intelligence service. In response, he said he did hold opinions – and they were “very negative”.
When asked about his view of the UK, he said: “I love the UK … I would never do anything deliberate which would have the potential to harm this country – not ever.”
Phillips told jurors he first made contact with the agents by sending a letter to the Russian embassy in March 2024. “I simply wrote a letter portraying that I had information and that if they are interested, they should be in contact with me,” he said.
Phillips said he did not have any information to share, and when asked why he made contact, he said: “Because of events that were happening in the world, I was intending to track and expose the Russian agents.”
When asked why he wanted to do this, Phillips said: “Because they are the enemy and also, there was another side to it that was, at the time, the media portrayal of Israel was very negative.
“I was thinking to myself, if I could expose an agent, I could take that to the Israelis and facilitate benefit to the Israelis by the [UK] media having to portray that Israel had helped the UK – which goes on behind the scenes anyway.”
The court heard that Phillips had met Shapps on four occasions in the past, after they met at Potters Bar synagogue in Hertfordshire. He said he had “socialised” with Shapps in the then MP’s house after an “invitation to dinner and also to a meeting”.
When asked if he was “friends” with the politician, he said: “I would say more acquaintances than friends.”
Phillips said that in early 2024 he was living off his “dilapidating capital”, adding: “I was pretty low about everything.”
He told jurors he had also sent letters to the Iranian and Chinese embassies in March 2024. When asked why, he said: “The same criteria. To expose and trap a foreign agent who I perceived were the enemies.”
The court heard he had sent several letters in the past to various political figures, celebrities and business people, among others. In November 2022 he sent a letter to the actor Jennifer Aniston and the agent of Tom Cruise.
Phillips also sent letters to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Suella Braverman and Steve Barclay, among others. The trial continues.
