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Corruption

My Lords, it is good to hear a former very senior member of the British Armed Forces, as well as a colleague on this side of the House, talking in those terms. I reflect with some sadness that in the debate so far the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General has been helped in the arguments he has deployed by only two colleagues, the noble Lords, Lord Brennan and Lord Soley. That is a pretty vivid illustration of the way the House feels about this very disturbing matter. I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby on her initiative and skill in putting down this Motion to ask the Government to give some important answers to some very serious questions. Although he is not in the Chamber at the moment, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, for making some very wise points indeed. Corruption of any kind—even the thorny problem of finding a definition of it that will stand up to searching analysis—is a hard item for parliamentarians to deal with. I recall that I made my own maiden speech in this House on 16 July 2004 on the very themes encapsulated in the Joint Committee on the draft Corruption Bill. If time allowed, it would be useful to go into all those matters now, but I shall spare the House from that. I am delighted that our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, is launching his own Corruption Bill soon, which will assist our progress in this complex field. However, it is mainly corruption at home that is in people’s minds when they think of legislation like that; it is when corruption involves overseas that the stark issues we are discussing today arise. Coming back to the matter in hand, I begin by solemnly asking the Attorney-General to take a deep breath and reconsider his recent decision in respect of the SFO inquiry into BAE Systems—and indeed his future role, as has been enunciated by other speakers in this debate. In all the 27 years I spent in the House of Commons, and in the short period that I have been a Member of this House, I cannot recall a time when I felt more shocked and disturbed than I did at the noble and learned Lord’s announcement on 14 December, a bleak day indeed in the history of our modern Parliament, of modern governance and indeed of a Government more beleaguered and discredited than ever before, for all sorts of reasons. We are now told on good authority that the SFO personnel have suffered a collapse in morale and self-confidence as a result of this intervention that will take a long time to repair. I do not accept the Written Answer given to me on 31 January by the noble and learned Lord on that matter. Incidentally, on the same day the Prime Minister was being grilled by the cops—as they say in the soaps—in Downing Street on the cash-for-peerages affair. There is now some reason for assuming that Scotland Yard, undaunted by some pretty nasty pressurising from foolish Ministers and others, is insisting on asking awkward questions and persisting with the inquiry; maybe even closing in on certain highly placed people, I do not know. That is nothing to do with this particular issue, but is gives a flavour of the atmosphere at the moment in this country and the way the public feel so disturbed about many of these things that are happening, when no proper explanations are being given. I cannot think of recent precedents for a principal inquiry by the SFO, a body which knows how hard it is to get the evidence to make the charges real and fit for court scrutiny and proper legal inquiry, being literally stopped in its tracks on the most artificial and spurious of arguments that would have made former South American dictators proud of their skills. At least the Attorney-General had a smidgen of grace in saying that he felt uncomfortable with the decision. That is one the greatest understatements in recent parliamentary declarations. This key investigation by the SFO had already gone on for a very long time, so hard had it been to gather evidence. Ominously, as the SFO began to get closer to the real facts and the truth behind secret bank accounts and the like, the arrogance of the Saudi rulers and princes came out in full force. Why is it so important for this Labour—yes, Labour—Government to give such succour to a pretty dubious regime, to say the least. I do not want to offend any Members of this House, but the idea that the Saudi Arabian regime is regarded as popular in the West or in most Arabian countries would be laughable. No one seems to ask for democracy in that country with the same intensity as did the Americans in Iraq. It is a country with an entrenched and reactionary monarchy which does not let people vote properly, although it is pretending to have discussions about it. It forces women into medieval dress codes and forbids them to drive cars. Even in Arabian countries, that is regarded as unattractive in a modern society. I do not believe that the Saudis would have discontinued security co-operation with the West or with this country if the investigation had continued. The survival of their own unappetising regime depends on such contacts anyway—it is two-way traffic in intelligence services as we know—and if the Saudi Government and various individuals were innocent of the charges to which the SFO investigation was leading, they had nothing to fear from this inquiry proceeding to its proper conclusion in line with international law. Thus has our own formerly distinguished nation in this context, with a long history of trying to reach probity and accountability both at home and abroad, prostrated itself with explanations which are so flimsy as to be laughable. I do not believe the preposterous notion that no weight has been given to commercial interests or the national economic interest. How on earth can the SFO credibly carry on the inquiries into slush funds in other countries? This is one of the more ludicrous fall-out effects of all. Presumably, the elected leaders of Romania, Chile, the Czech Republic, South Africa and Tanzania, who, unlike those in Saudi Arabia, are elected, can ask for the same exemptions, some of them with a much stronger claim on providing regular reliable security information to this country on a reciprocal basis. What a grotesque farce as well as an utter disgrace. It is no surprise to recall the origins of this deal—they go back to the mid-1980s, when Mrs Thatcher was keen on the president of Chile, Prince Sultan and King Fahd—and the huge commercial importance of this order. It is said that even Mr Mark Thatcher may have been involved at the margins, but I know nothing about the details of that. The Attorney-General has a legitimate responsibility to determine the genuine public interest of Britain. He is not required to give first place to the public and private interests of questionable characters in a government of a foreign country with a doubtful reputation, as many people would agree. We also now know from people here being prepared to be both brave and indiscreet that the chiefs of our security services had grave doubts over this sordid tampering directly by Number 10. There was even a suggestion that the British Government had seized on the argument of security co-operation before even the Saudis had begun to say the same things. We do not know; we are scrambling around for genuine and legitimate information on this matter. We ask the Attorney-General to think again. At the heart of this monumental disgrace is a dual role which is no longer valid in the modern world, with our complex need for full information and open government. The Attorney-General needs to think seriously about these matters and decide what he has to do.