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Al-Yamamah Arms Agreement

I shall come to the issue of national security, because in the end it clearly determined the decision. However, I first wish to take the series of events to its conclusion. The statements were made in both Houses on a Thursday evening. The following day the Prime Minister was asked about the decision to discontinue the prosecution. Any normal reading of what he said makes it clear that it was his call that the proceedings were discontinued. Since those few days in December, what troubles many people is that the argument for the discontinuation of the prosecution appears to have shifted, depending on who was explaining the reasons. For example, the Attorney-General has said both privately and publicly that there were two factors in his mind and that of the director of the Serious Fraud Office. The same two factors are involved in the decision on any prosecution. The first is whether it has a better than 50 per cent. chance of success and the second is whether it is in the public interest. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) alluded to different types of prosecution, but the same two considerations apply equally every day, whether on decisions to prosecute old ladies who take things from supermarkets or on huge international contracts. One of the reasons given on 14 and 15 December, which later appeared to be less secure, was that the director of the Serious Fraud Office thought that there was no more mileage in the prosecution. However, we know that he thought that further investigation might have led somewhere because he confirmed it a day or two later, and he had a difference of view with the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General took a different view and said so. His view was that it was unlikely that even further months of investigation would lead to a successful conclusion. The security and intelligence services were also prayed in aid. It is still not clear what they said to Ministers, to the ambassador, to the director or to Law Officers. When the Attorney-General was questioned about that in the other place, in the debate initiated by Baroness Williams last week—it was a positive and engaged debate in which many of my colleagues took part—he said:"““I need to deal with one or two matters specifically. First, the position of SIS, the secret intelligence agency was raised … SIS has made it clear publicly that it shared the concerns of others in government over the possible consequences for the public interest of the SFO investigation.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 February 2007; Vol. 689, c. 379.]" I will not read the whole paragraph into the record, but hon. Members can check that I am not misrepresenting by omission. However, the Attorney-General went on to say:"““As I said on 18 January, before the SFO decision was taken, I discussed the matter directly with the chief of SIS. The SIS has authorised me to say that it is clear about the importance of the Saudi counterterrorist effort to the UK.””" No one can argue with that: of course a relationship with an ally to deal with terrorism is valuable. The Attorney-General went on to say that the view of the SIS was"““that it would not be possible to replicate the level of counter-terrorism effort that had been achieved with the Saudis on UK/Saudi aspects of the problem if it were necessary to work at one remove, via the USA, for example.””—Official Report, House of Lords, 1 February 2007; Vol. 689, c. 379.]" We accept that too. But it is at least likely that the intelligence sharing exercise by the UK Government and their agencies and the Saudi Government and their agencies is as valuable to Saudi Arabia as it is to us. Given that al-Qaeda’s prime objective is to destroy the house of Saud, which it believes has betrayed and corrupted the Islamic tradition, Saudi Arabia has a clear interest in making sure that it gets the intelligence that the UK, as a huge and effective centre for intelligence, acquires. There is no dispute about what the Attorney-General quotes the director of the SIS as saying. What has never been clear is that the director of the SIS gave a warning that caused the decision not to pursue the investigation to be taken.