Tim Worstall

BAE, Eurofighter and Saudi Arabia

This is absolutely fascinating:

Saudi Arabia has given Britain 10 days to halt a fraud investigation
into the country’s arms trade – or lose a £10 billion Eurofighter
contract.

Now, OK, make allowances that this is a leak from one side or another of what is actually being said. There’s obviously some bluster in it as well. But if it’s in any way true at all we’re setting up for a question that will tell us an enormous amount about the UK.

On the one side we have 50,000 jobs, hundreds of millions that the Government gets as a rake off on the contract, further billions and billions in exports and quite possibly, our own Eurofighter contracts.

Big important stuff.

On the other side we have the rule of law. Is this something we honour? Or is it something put aside when other more important matters arise? Wherein lies the rub of course, for who decides what are those more important matters when there is no longer one law for all, that some people and some behaviours are above it?

Cue the quote:

Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you,
where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is
planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s!
And if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it! – do you
really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

What makes this all so amusing (albeit darkly so) is that it didn’t have to be this way at all. We could have carried on happily, making the distinction between bribes and corruption at home (not allowed) and bribery and corruption abroad, in those places where they do not even pretend to have the rule of law, if it were not for the current government itself:

In 2002 a law was brought in to forbid British companies from offering bribes to third parties to secure business.

In

4 responses

  1. StuartA Avatar
    StuartA

    A fascinating perspective from the defender of private enterprise. This issue reduces, you say, to a straight trade off between jobs and the rule of law.
    Your usual concern about government subsidy and intervention in the affairs of companies, and wasting of taxpayers’ money, apparently doesn’t apply here. Why would that be? Why are we not hearing about iniquitous “pump priming”? Why does the Eurofighter not deserve the criticism you direct at Airbus?
    Why, instead, are you implying that the government was foolish to implement anti-bribery measures? Are you are actually saying we should have “happily” continued suborning corruption abroad? If not, what is your point?
    Tim adds: I write about Airbus because I’m actually a part of the program: I’m a supplier to them in the day job. I’m not to the Eurofighter, so thus have less of interest to say perhaps?
    But I thought my concern here was pretty clear: I’m more in favour of the rule of law than I am of it being discarded when inconvenient.

    Reply
  2. StuartA Avatar
    StuartA

    Are you suggesting your interest in Airbus, and the outrageous governmental intervention associated with it, solely derives from your position as a supplier? No, presumably not, since you regularly complain about other taxpayer-funded interventions polluting the glorious free market.
    So yes, I can accept you have “less interest” in Eurofighter than Airbus at a personal level, but no, I can’t accept that this explains the absence of the usual free marketeer boilerplate in this posting, and in others on Eurofighter — not unless you admit that all your previous raging about wastage of taxpayer money and the horrors of public provision had nothing to do with principle.
    And no, it was not clear that you came down on the side of law. If that was your view your concluding remark certainly obscured it:
    “We could have carried on happily, making the distinction between bribes and corruption at home (not allowed) and bribery and corruption aborad, in thopse places where they do not even pretend to have the rule of law, if it were not for the current government itself.”
    You have not indicated if you support the anti-corruption measures that created this situation. Since you claim to be on the side of law, one assumes you do. But if that’s the case, why paint the outcome of these measures as reflecting poorly on the government?
    Tim adds: Ah, no, you seriously misunderstand me. I write about Airbus because I understand some of what is going on (it cannot be incumbent upon me to complain about every piece of industrial featherbedding that government performs now, can it?). Indeed, the very fact that I am a supplier, but that I am still scathing of the Airbus project shows that I can, at least sometimes, separate my commentary from what is in my own direct financial interest.
    As to bribery in foreign places, I was against bringing that law in. I’ve lived and worked in places where bribery was simply the only way to get anything done at all and I’ve bribed along with the best of them in those places (up to and including a Prime Minister). I really haven’t been able to see why we should saddle British industry with constraints that competitors (except the US) don’t have.
    Now, having said that I don’t think the law should be on the books at all the fact is that it is there. We now face the interesting decision (unfortunately not to be taken by you and I) as to whether the law wins or expediency does?

    Reply
  3. john b Avatar
    john b

    Tim’s position here is perfectly coherent: the law should be upheld; bribing foreigners should not be against the law; but since it is, people who do it should be prosecuted.
    You seem to think that wanting society to tolerate any kind of bribery anywhere inherently means aversion to the rule of law, which is clearly rubbish.

    Reply
  4. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    Surely failing to bribe certain foreigners is an affront to multiculturalism. How unPC.

    Reply

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