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Al-Yamamah Arms Agreement

I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on presenting a debate on what is without doubt a very important issue. The question of the discontinuance of the Serious Fraud Office investigation, the role of the Attorney-General and the director of the Serious Fraud Office in doing that, and the consultation with Ministers before it took place are all highly legitimate issues for debate in the House. The fact that we have an opportunity to debate them is clearly of great value. I shall come back to that aspect of the matter in a few moments. I hope that the hon. Member for Twickenham will forgive my saying this, but it is noteworthy that the Liberal Democrat motion was very widely drawn. It is also noteworthy that he did not raise some aspects of the motion at all in the course of the debate, which came as a slight surprise to me. There was no reference to the very important issue of the sale of the military air traffic control system to Tanzania, though that may be because the matter was extensively debated on a Conservative Opposition motion on 30 January. More tellingly, although the motion calls for an inquiry into the circumstances of the SFO action, the hon. Member for Twickenham made no mention of it. That made me wonder whether his views on the matter were now so set in stone that he did not consider that any independent inquiry was needed in any event—[Interruption.] I hear reference made on the Liberal Democrat Benches to lawyers’ comments; the hon. Member for Twickenham will hear more of them in a few moments. As I listened to what he had to say and as I tried to conduct a reasonably objective analysis of some really serious matters, I started to have increasing worries about the way in which he was carrying his reasoning forward. The hon. Member for Twickenham raised a number of issues about the initial principle of the al-Yamamah agreement. That seems a perfectly legitimate issue of debate. It is an old matter, going back to the 1980s and it was, of course, negotiated by a Conservative Government and, seeing that its provisions have been renewed, continued by a Labour Government. It is, by any showing, an unusual arrangement. It is unusual because it is a Government-to-Government agreement and because of the methods of payment under it, as it is partly paid for by Saudi oil—which is unusual in itself. It is a relationship package at a Government-to-Government level rather than an ordinary commercial agreement. That is perfectly clear. As such, when the hon. Gentleman said that he disliked the arrangements, he was raising a perfectly legitimate point, albeit one that it is somewhat ancient history. I come back to an issue that I raised with the hon. Gentleman when I intervened earlier. What was difficult to understand was how he succeeded—in a virtuoso performance—in conflating his dislike of the arrangements with the suggestion that it was economically disadvantageous. I must say that that was the first time that I had heard that suggested, and it was the point in his argument at which I began to think that I might not be inhabiting the same planet as him. I ask him about it again, as I hope there may be an opportunity to deal further with it in the summing-up. It is possible to argue that we should not have such relations with Saudi Arabia or that such Government-to-Government agreements are undesirable and should never be embarked on, but the suggestion that the agreement is economically disadvantageous for this country requires rather more justification than he was able to provide. Equally, the hon. Gentleman did not deal at all—or at least he skated over—another important question of whether the agreement as a package was advantageous or disadvantageous for our national security and national interest. I hope that at some point we will hear from the Liberal Democrats whether they believe that the nature of the agreement and the building of relations with another state in the middle east—an area of instability—in the form that the al-Yamamah agreement has undoubtedly achieved is desirable or not. Some of the arguments that the hon. Gentleman went on to make must be viewed in that light, and we are surely entitled to know what the Liberal Democrats think of the basic principle of the security co-operation between the two Governments. As far as I can tell—I look carefully at my notes—that was entirely skated over. That may be convenient for the hon. Gentleman in characterising the Liberal Democrat approach of never committing to anything. [Interruption.] I look forward to hearing more about that.