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Corruption

My Lords, this is a very important debate and I welcome the opportunity given to us by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, to bring it before the House. This is not the only occasion on which the matter has been debated. I am very grateful that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, started his comments almost with the words, ““I feel your pain””. I remember well the Al Yamamah deal and the problems that it caused for the then Conservative Government. These are not easy matters. They bring into issue the interface between the rule of law and the problem of politics in an unlawful world. That is a part of the agenda which I do not think the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, addressed. I should like her to address it at some stage, because it is a very important part of this debate. I agree very much with the comments of my noble friend Lord Brennan on the difference between national interest and national security. If I may simply identify myself with that difference, I need spend no further time on it. It is an important point and very relevant. Other important matters have been raised by this issue, including the role of the Attorney-General. I have often wondered whether that role should be so heavily embedded in the Government. It is an interesting question. I do not feel expert enough to comment on it, although I note that, following all the constitutional changes that we have made, some people are now saying that we should take yet another step and make an even bigger change. Whether we should or not, I do not know, but I believe that it is a matter for significant debate. The one area that I do not think is in any way justified is criticism of the integrity of the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General. His integrity on this and other issues is beyond question, but he has been presented with a profoundly difficult problem concerning the role of the political system and the role of the judicial system. Fortunately, in Britain we are all strongly signed up to the concept of the rule of law, and we operate in a country which places the rule of law on a pedestal. That is very good and it is one thing that we are admired for around the world. The problem, as I indicated earlier, is that we operate in an unlawful world. As with so many issues, we are trying to bring law to the wider world. In doing so, we must lecture people elsewhere on their behaviour and confront serious contradictions from time to time. This is not a new issue which has just emerged with the role of the United Nations and the rule of law. It is not now well remembered but, in 1940, Sir Winston Churchill was challenged on the lawfulness of the occupation of Iceland; there was no legal basis for it, but everybody knew that it had to happen. No permission was given by the Icelandic Parliament; it was just done for reasons of national security of which everybody was aware. Issues like this have cropped up from time to time. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, might like to remember that, on the issue of whether Britain should intervene and invoke our treaty with Cyprus when Turkey invaded, we did not do so for two reasons: first, our defence ability was not good enough at the time and, secondly, national interest and security. The way we are now trying to operate in the world is incredibly important. As we have this debate, the President of China, Hu Jintao, is going around Africa saying that China is not attaching any of the strings to aid or grants that are being attached by the western world. That should not lead any of us to conclude that we therefore give up and say that we cannot impose the rule of law on issues like bribery and corruption because the Chinese are giving money to Governments whom we know will use it in a corrupt manner. I am not led to that conclusion, but it makes me aware of the struggle between the emergence of the rule of law and the political structures in which we must operate. Nothing could be more relevant to that than the country in the focus on this issue and the Al Yamamah deal. Saudi Arabia has a crucial position in the Middle East as a whole. It is, and has been for many years, a pretty corrupt and authoritarian regime. There has been considerable pressure on the Saudi Arabian Government to reform, particularly since September 11 2001 and the invasion of Iraq. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, might regret the way we lecture countries, but the lecture is appropriate. Our problem with Saudi Arabia is not dissimilar to that with any other authoritarian regime trying to move into a more democratic and responsive role: if you push too hard, it goes the other way. That is the problem we face in the conflict between getting higher standards of the rule of law and democracy in other countries, while dealing with the conflict over national security. It would matter immensely to this country and, above all, to the stability of the whole region if Saudi Arabia went seriously pear-shaped. I am not a lawyer, so I have an advantage in facing the political/legal interface. Many lawyers, perhaps inevitably, get trapped—because of their training, important though that is—into trying to analyse an issue detail by detail as though the law applies everywhere. I sometimes feel that part of a legal course ought to be a compulsory historical tour of this place, not least Westminster Hall where you can look at the plaques in the floor to see that some people were on trial for seven years whose charges were dismissed, while others were on trial for three days and then executed. At that time, we were developing the rule of law in the context of an emerging democracy. These problems are not easy. Whether the Attorney-General’s role remains as it is, is independent or whether we publish certain evidence or advice he offers from time to time on important and relevant issues deserving pursuit, whatever we do, we will always be confronted with the conflict between exporting the rule of law and democracy and cutting our cloth to face the challenges of day—be they the current situation in the Middle East or the invasion of Iceland. They will be there, and we must face that.