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Al-Yamamah Arms Agreement

Although I disagree with the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry), I must say, in the light of my intervention, that he made what was technically a very good speech. I do not normally start with a presumption in favour of the Government, but I do so on this occasion, and nothing that the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) said has affected that. I accept that, on the face of it, the Government start from a bad position. We do not pay lip service to but genuinely believe in the rule of law, yet the Serious Fraud Office, either on its own initiative or through Government representations, which were undoubtedly made, decided to discontinue a serious inquiry that had been going on for a long time. That led to criticism from the OECD, and criticism from the South African President of double standards. Clearly, the position is embarrassing, and we would all have preferred to avoid it. That is not good enough, however. We must consider whether the rule of law—technically applied to mean that, when one has evidence, one brings a prosecution against those deemed responsible—should always prevail or whether there can be circumstances, albeit rare, when that is not proper. It has already been said that, for many years, when deciding whether to bring a prosecution, it has been necessary to ask not only whether there is sufficient evidence but whether the public interest justifies it. In the debate in another place, my noble Friend Lord Mayhew, a former Attorney-General, referred to an occasion in Northern Ireland when he was involved in a decision not to go ahead with a prosecution because of the wider public interest. We must bear it in mind that, when we talk about our commitment to the rule of law, it is not an end in itself. It is simply a crucial method of trying to achieve a decent and just society, in which people’s rights are recognised and justice can be applied. It is not an end in itself. If there is a wider public interest, there is nothing improper about taking that into account. The decision is not easy. It would be much more difficult to justify what has happened on the occasion that we are considering if an individual citizen’s rights had been impeded. If, for example, someone is locked up for 90 days without trial, that is not easy to justify, even if there is a wider national interest, because a person’s liberty has been removed. If someone is murdered or assaulted and, despite the availability of evidence, a prosecution is not initiated because of some wider public interest, that is disturbing because the decision impedes someone’s rights. That is not the position that we are considering, however. Rightly or wrongly, the issue at stake is not the individual’s rights but those of society. No one disputes—indeed, the hon. Member for Twickenham agreed—that if there are legitimate issues of national security, it is right and proper for them occasionally to prevail over a decision to take a prosecution forward. The hon. Gentleman is nodding in agreement with my interpretation of his views. The question that must be addressed is: were there legitimate reasons of national security that justified the decision in this case? The honest answer is that none of us in the Chamber knows, as we are not privy to the most important intelligence information available. The Serious Fraud Office did not know. I suspect that the Attorney-General may not have known, except at second or third hand. The person who has the ultimate responsibility is the Prime Minister. From my experience as Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary, when I had access to intelligence information and had to deal with Saudi Arabia over the course of five years, I can say two things. First, I have no doubt that the kind of co-operation that Saudi Arabia is giving to the United Kingdom with regard to counter-terrorism measures is of enormous importance in enabling us to succeed in our objectives of dealing with terrorism. Secondly, I can comment on whether the Saudis were serious in their threats that that co-operation would cease if the inquiry continued. Several hon. Members have said that it is absurd to argue that the Saudis would have discontinued their co-operation when their own regime is threatened by al-Qaeda. That is logically correct, but I was once told that logic was the art of going wrong with confidence, and I believe that that applies on this occasion. Anyone who understands the regime in force in Saudi Arabia knows that one is not dealing with a single head of state—like the Shah of Iran in his heyday—but with a royal family, a clan, who are intensely jealous of their privileges and determined to ensure that there will be no, as they would see it, unacceptable investigation of how they go about their lives. From my experience with the Saudis, I have no doubt that they would almost certainly have carried out the threat, even if they were cutting off their nose to spite their face. That was the dilemma that the Government faced. The judgment was a difficult one, and the Prime Minister—who, I assume, ultimately gave the advice that had to be taken on board by the Attorney-General and the SFO—was right on this occasion.