Jon Bright (London, OK): This from the Lib Dem's "Corruption is a Crime" website: apparently Lady Scotland, current attorney general, wants a statutory power to halt CPS or SFO investigations on the basis of "national security" or "international relations" to be part of the upcoming constitutional reform bill. Which would, one fears, lead to more episodes like the disgraceful halting of the SFO inquiry into the BAE / al-Yamamah arms deal - and with the potential for other types of criminal investigations, of crimes worse than bribery, to be airbrushed out of existence with one or two ambiguous references to the national interest. The BAE incident was a huge failure on a number of levels - lots of shadowy allegations of Blair being "threatened" with a potential increase in terrorist attacks were, for me, not as bad as the general, residual resentment created by people being able to beat the system with impunity. A halted investigation isn't a proof of guilt - but neither does it feel likely that it was halted because there wasn't enough evidence.
The website is quick to point out how hollow this move would make Gordon Brown's promise of July last year to try and restore some trust in politics - remains to be seen whether this will appear in the final draft. Is our national security under so much threat that we need someone empowered to halt the justice system in action if it risks endangering the country? What types of security and transparency would we need to ensure that such a power would not be abused? And who could we trust to wield it? It seems to beggar belief that it could be given to someone expressly related to a political party. And the idea that the constitutional reform bill, which could be about democratic opening and renewal of trust, could instead be about closing off more avenues of accountability, seems to me a spectacular retreat from the promise of last year.
