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Al-Yamamah Arms Agreement

That longish intervention is clearly helpful to the debate. I await the outcome of the OECD investigation, and if the OECD expresses a contrary view, this House must re-examine the matter. I remain unconvinced that it is absolutely clear that the SFO has acted in accordance with the OECD convention—I am not a lawyer, but I have my doubts. I find it difficult to accept the argument that Saudi Arabia—the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) has made this point—would not share intelligence to combat terrorism. Saudi Arabia has at least as big a stake in fighting terrorism as anyone else, although I do not expect my hon. and learned Friend the Minister to provide cast iron evidence to the House. I sincerely hope that in the not-too-distant future a Committee of this House will have the opportunity to scrutinise that argument a little more closely. Like the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), I am also cautious about the value of intelligence from Saudi Arabia. I am not picking on that country, because that is the nature of the case that we are considering. Year after year, the Government’s human rights reports comment on infringements of human rights in Saudi Arabia—for example, torture and ill treatment in prison. I feel uncomfortable in assuming that information gathered by intelligence services will always be reliable in a society where, as the Government have pointed out, there is very limited press freedom, the rule of law is not as robust as in other countries and there is torture and maltreatment in prisons. The hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned the case of Sandy Mitchell; I will not repeat that. I acknowledge that we are going back three years and accept that the Government will argue that there has been massive progress in the past two years. I hope that there has, but I remain uncomfortable about accepting on face value intelligence from a country that has had, and does have, serious problems with human rights.