A little more on the (cancelled) BAE/Saudi arms deal investigation. I should stress again (though it will be obvious, from the fact that the investigation has not been allowed to complete) that I have no idea what the facts are behind the fraud allegations, and whether or not anything illegal took place. That said, here are a fistful of comments from the BBC's article on the story. They include most perspectives, including two from the Attorney General's office:
The Attorney General himself:
Lord Goldsmith said he felt the Serious Fraud Office inquiry would not have led to a prosecution.
The Law Enforcer:
SFO head Robert Wardle said he had "a different view" to Lord Goldsmith.
Mr Wardle told the Financial Times newspaper: "There is no guarantee that charges will be brought until you've completed an investigation."
The Lib-Dems:
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Lester said Britain had to move quickly to change the law to stop political interference in corruption investigations.
"What is so serious here is that the rule of law is threatened and the reputation of the office of attorney general when there is outside political interference of this kind."
The Campaigner:
Explaining why his group was taking legal action, Nicholas Gilby from Campaign Against the Arms Trade said the SFO should have been allowed to complete its inquiries.
The Attorney General's office:
... said it was unable to comment on "hypothetical" legal situations such as the possibility of action by campaigners.
Unless, of course, the hypothetical situation was whether or not the SFO inquiry would have led to a prosecution.
Once again, the justification of government policy seems to rest on the most hair-splitting semantic manipulations. The attorney general has to maintain that antagonising the Saudis to the point where the UK lost the deal is 'contrary to national interests', but cannot say that those interests are commercial or economic ones. If he does that, he will fall foul of EU law. So he has to claim that the threat is to the country's security interests... in that losing the Saudis as a regional ally will increase Britain's exposure to the international terrorist threat.
In other words, the terrorists have succeeded in forcing the Attorney General to adopt a policy despite the law, rather than in conformance to it.
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