Reinstate SFO probe

Tony Blair once again dragged Britain's reputation in the mire when he and his compliant attorney general Lord Goldsmith put pressure on SFO director Robert Wardle to abort the inquiry.

They allowed Saudi Prince Bandar to blackmail the British government into accepting that, if the inquiry laid bare the bribes paid to the prince in pursuance of BAE arms export deal, the corrupt Riyadh monarchy would cease anti-terrorist co-operation with Britain's security agencies.

To be frank, the prince probably didn't have to push that hard, given that "pro-business" new Labour ministers would not have been too keen on embarrassing City boardrooms where most of them will seek lucrative part-time work after their time in office.

BAE Systems insists that its operations have always been lawful and ethical and it has paid £6,000 a day for a year to lucky old former lord chief justice Lord Woolf of Whitewash to lay down standards for future conduct.

But Lord Woolf was not asked to look into the al-Yamamah deal and actually said that, if asked, he would have declined on the grounds that he is not a police officer.

And why would he want to be? Police officers don't get paid £6,000 a day.

And BAE chairman Dick Olver is also intent on ensuring that not only Lord Woolf but everyone else will be prevented from investigating the Saudi deal on the grounds that any such inquiry "is doomed to failure."

If that is so, why not allow the SFO to continue its aborted inquiry and either prove or disprove his hypothesis?

To use Lord Woolf's ethical fig leaf, legal jiggery-pokery or political machinations to rectify the unlawful decision, announced by Lord Goodman, to scupper the SFO inquiry would ensure that a nauseating stench of corruption and hypocrisy lingers in the highest echelons of business and government.

According to Mr Olver, there is nothing to gain by halting trade links with corrupt, medieval tyrannies such as Saudi Arabia "and I am not a believer that you can influence places by not engaging with them."

Obviously not and, even if progress is slow, the bitter pill is sweetened by the billions of pounds of profits generated by arming this despotic regime to the teeth.

Perhaps Mr Olver could suggest a list of improvements in human rights that his company's decades of trade with Riyadh have brought about.

He has also developed a catchphrase, along the lines of having "no reason to believe" that BAE has broken the law.

Most poor people who are dragged through prosecutions for benefit fraud have no reason to believe that they have done anything wrong, but this will not prevent them from being subjected to voice risk analysis technology, more commonly known as lie detectors.

Given that many City boardrooms are closely acquainted with tax avoidance, bribery and price fixing, maybe these should be the venue for lie detector tests rather than benefit offices where frightened claimants are likely to withdraw claims rather than risk prosecution over relatively trivial amounts of cash.