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Corruption

My Lords, I must first congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on initiating this debate. I want to follow up some of the points that she specifically raised at the beginning. But I start by saying that we should all welcome the fact that we are now discussing this issue in a totally different context and climate to any comparable debate 20, 15 or even 10 years ago. An awful lot has changed; in those days, the general attitude throughout the world was to keep quiet whenever possible about issues of bribery and corruption and to assume that it was right to turn a blind eye and that even if anyone wanted to take action nothing could be done. Thankfully, in the UK and the world generally, some progress has been made and these issues are now being discussed in a totally different context—that of discussing what possible action should be taken with the different presumption that action should be taken whenever possible. That is a very different backdrop to what we would have had even 10 years ago. The Government deserve credit for the role that they have played in that both in publishing criteriafor assessing licensing decisions, which goes back10 years, but also the legislation of 2001. But I remind the House that although we have a different climate in which to discuss these issues, it does not mean that bribery and corruption is an easy problem to tackle or to deal with. We have to be realistic in any case, with any prosecution that involves these issues in a foreign country, that they will be difficult to clarify and not easy to prove. The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General has made it clear in the BAE case that he did not think that a successful prosecution was a likely outcome, and I think that we should all accept his word. I certainly do. Even had the situation been different, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, was saying, and the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General had been convinced that a successful prosecution was likely, he would still have had a duty to consider the consequences of any such prosecution and, in particular, a duty and responsibility to consider national security interests. Like one or two other noble Lords who have spoken today I am not a lawyer. It is strange that we always want to make that clear! I am not sure that I understand all these procedures precisely. However, as I understand it, the Serious Fraud Office has to abide by certain principles which are set out in the code for Crown prosecutors, which is why there are two stages to the decision: first, whether there is sufficient evidence and, secondly, if there is sufficient evidence, whether it is in the public interest to pursue the case. To my simple mind, that means that the procedures that are laid down anticipate that there will be cases in which the national interest takes precedence—otherwise, why would we have that kind of two-tier procedure? In the case of BAE Systems or any other case the basic questions are whether there is sufficient evidence and whether public interest takes precedence. We have heard again today demands to know who gave advice on what was in the national interest and, in particular, what was the role of our intelligence and security services and whether the decision was made on political or economic grounds. The fact that the SFO is pursuing other cases involving, among others, BAE in other circumstances, leads me to believe that it is serious in its intent in examining all these cases carefully and that we should not simply write off all those cases as an earlier speaker did. When the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Garden, on18 January—a letter that has been used by noble Lords several times today—he said that the decision, "““was based on potential damage to the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, and ultimately on the risk to the lives of our citizens and service people if the case had gone ahead. The judgment was that UK co-operation with Saudi Arabia in the counter-terrorism field is of crucial importance; that Saudi Arabia is a source of valuable streams of intelligence on Al Qa’ida and other terrorism activity””." We all know that those threats are real. To some, that statement simply provokes demands for making the information public. I remind the House that demands of that nature for more information in the public domain led to the publication of the dossier on Iraq in September 2002 and the whole debate about the nature of intelligence and levels of understanding about the limits of intelligence. I was close to that issue at that time and do not want to say too much about it, but any public statements by agency heads on issues of this kind will lead either to demands for more and more information or to accusations that they have been leant on, or both. I urge some realism about the necessary caution that must be exercised in these matters. We have heard also demands for proof of what would have followed had there been a successful prosecution in the BAE case. I do not think that we can pretend that anyone knows with certainty. Would the Saudis have withheld co-operation or been less willing to share vital information? Would they have been less willing to take risks themselves? My answer is that I do not know for sure—and I doubt whether anyone in this House knows for sure, including Ministers. But Ministers have to make decisions; they have to consult agency heads, diplomats, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and, yes, the Prime Minister who is closely involved in receiving information on intelligence assessments. At the end of the day, Ministers have to make a decision, which involves national security and therefore cannot be taken lightly—otherwise Ministers will be accused of dereliction of duty if they did not give protection of the citizens of this country absolute priority.