Tonight:
4°c
So much nonsense is being written about the halting of the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the BAE Systems deal with Saudi Arabia, that I want to scream. Whenever I see references to Prince Bandar bin Sultan and how he allegedly received a kickback - and what a terrible thing that is - I feel an urge to shout: I don't care!
It does not bother me in the slightest whether an already fabulously wealthy Arab had his fortune added to. That's how business is done in some quarters in the Middle East and if anyone believes otherwise, they are naive. If they imagine the French, for instance, don't get up to the same tricks or that the Americans, who love to profess their piety, don't find a less overt way of greasing the palms of purchasers on defence and industrial orders they need their heads examined.
The whole point of getting to the bottom of who got what on the £43 billion Al-Yamamah contract is not to see who was bunged in Saudi but who had their pockets lined in the UK. Even allowing for its size, Al-Yamamah was no ordinary armaments contract. Agreed in stages, the first in 1985, it represented an extraordinary coup for BAE and the UK government. It looked as though the French, a much closer trading partner of the Saudis, would land the deal. But BAE, assisted by the full might of Downing Street, won through.
What was extraordinary, as I remember well, was the degree to which the Thatcher and then the Major administrations bent over backwards to accommodate BAE and the Saudis. An inordinate amount of Whitehall time, effort and taxpayers' money, was devoted to securing the project. The government pulled out all the stops. It was also intimately involved in the structuring of the project, for the order wasn't one of straight cash payment but of oil for arms.
In exchange for the Tornado aircraft and other pieces of military hardware, the Saudis supplied oil to Shell and BP. The oil companies paid for the oil via an account at the Bank of England which was then used to pay BAE. There was nothing wrong with that but allegations surfaced that BAE and the Saudis had used middlemen who rewarded some of those in Whitehall and close to the Thatcher government for their efforts.
That was why pressure was put upon the National Audit Office to investigate. And it did, resulting in a memorandum to the then chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, Robert Sheldon MP, that was never published.
I remember going to see Sheldon in his room in Parliament and begging to see the NAO note. He wouldn't release it, he said, because he was fearful that BAE jobs, some of which were close to his constituency in the North-West of England, would be jeopardised. There was no mention of Prince Bandar, or any members of the Saudi ruling family, come to that. Sheldon knew what I was after.
When claims were subsequently made that BAE had a £60 million slush fund, used to furnish Saudi royals with prostitutes, demands were raised again for an inquiry. This time, the Serious Fraud Office moved in but they were then ordered to down tools.
The reason given by Tony Blair was that national security was at stake. Both countries had become bound together in the struggle against Al Qaeda and there was a danger the Saudis would cease to co-operate. There was another, unspoken, justification; the Saudis were about to place another massive contract, for Typhoon aircraft, and Britain didn't want to lose out.
That may be so but it's impossible to see how naming those in this country who benefited should provoke the Saudis to cease co-operating in the war on terror or should upset a new defence deal.
The real issue is being clouded, possibly deliberately. It's the people here who are of interest, not the ones over there.
