A man found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service after handing over personal details of the then defence secretary, Grant Shapps, to two undercover officers he believed to be Russian agents has been jailed for seven years.
Howard Phillips, 66, was convicted in July after jurors heard that he had been seeking “easy money” when he offered his services to the undercover officers, known as Dima and Sasha.
Phillips, from Harlow, in Essex, handed a USB stick containing details relating to Shapps, including his home address and the location of his private plane, to one of the officers, the trial heard. He told the jury he was Jewish and met Shapps at a synagogue as his local MP in the constituency of Welwyn Hatfield.
Phillips, who told the fake Russian agents he was retired and had worked in insolvency, was arrested in May 2024 and charged under the National Security Act.
Sentencing him at Winchester crown court, the judge, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, said: “You were prepared to betray your country for money. I sentence you on the basis you are not ideologically driven but motivated by money.
“You took a grave risk and didn’t care what damage you caused. Through the deliberate work of the security services you were caught before providing material assistance to a foreign intelligence service so the danger was averted.”
In a victim impact statement read to the court, Shapps said he was “shocked” when he was briefed on Phillips’s activities and concerned for the safety of his family.
“He chose to take whatever information he had and attempted to sell it to a foreign intelligence service, thereby, wantonly, putting myself, my family and ultimately the country at risk,” Shapps said in the statement.
“My personal details provided by Mr Phillips are extremely sensitive and again I would say that any disclosure places myself and my family at a very real and serious risk.
“What is unacceptable is one individual’s reckless behaviour exposing my entire family to the extremely serious risks that come from a foreign intelligence service’s activities.
“The UK has enough to do dealing with external threats, it’s shocking to find that someone in the neighbourhood would think it a good idea to try to sell information about the UK defence secretary to an unfriendly foreign state.”
In court, Phillips claimed he had been attempting to “expose” Russian agents and had hoped to pass information about the Russian spies to Israel, as he believed this would “benefit” the state.
The defendant’s ex-wife, Amanda Phillips, told the court during the trial that he “would dream about being like James Bond”, and that he watched films to do with MI5 and MI6 as he was “infatuated with it”.
He had been struggling financially and in the process of applying for a job at UK Border Force when he was approached by the undercover officers. He had written to the Russian embassy offering his services.
In March 2024, while the job application was live and pre-employment checks were being conducted, Phillips exchanged emails with the undercover officers, believing them to be Russian intelligence officers.
Phillips agreed to provide a document on a USB stick explaining what he could offer them by placing it in the exposed seat shaft of a bicycle that was located on a corner of Polygon Road in the St Pancras and Euston area of London.
In May that year, the undercover officers met Phillips at a Costa Coffee in West Thurrock where he told them he could provide them with personal details for Shapps.
