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Al-Yamamah Arms Agreement

I am grateful for that reply, but I do not see any evidence that the issues were truly considered. The Minister responsible for pursuing the anti-corruption action plan was not even consulted, as he has clarified to the House. Therefore how on earth can the Government have considered fully the implications of that side of the public interest argument? That Minister has made the case powerfully in Parliament that, by seeming to hold back on the prosecution of bribery and corruption cases ourselves, we give permission to other companies and other countries to take a softer line too. The arguments made by the Attorney-General in another place appear to be inhabiting an Alice in Wonderland world where people can contradict themselves within seconds. At one point he said that UK-Saudi security relations were an important factor, and he then said, in relation to obeying the OECD convention that prohibits taking into account relations with other states, that we did not do so—he used a phrase similar to that. I am amazed that anyone can contradict themselves within seconds in that way and expect no one to notice. Luckily, 130 campaign groups and charities around the world did notice, from India’s Public Interest Research Centre to the Jordan Transparency Forum to our own branches of Amnesty International, Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and Transparency International. They all called on the UK Government to abide by their own policies and to reopen the investigation. The Liberal Democrats noticed, too, as have Members of all parties who share our concerns. There might have been a national interest consideration that weighed in favour of dropping the case, but there was also a considerable and vital national and international interest in continuing it and, shamefully, I do not think that that was even considered.