Publication: Daily Mail
Issued:
Date: 2009-10-02
Reporter: Peter Osborne
|
BAE are targets of a deeply political
vendetta |
Fifty years ago Britain could still boast a magnificent and proud industrial
base, but today we only have two truly
world class manufacturing giants.
The first of these is the superlative pharmaceuticals
conglomerate Glaxo
and the second is the great defence contractor
British Aerospace.
BAE employs some 100,000 workers across the world and more than 30,000 in
Britain, mostly in gritty Midlands or northern towns.
Without BAE, the UK would be humiliatingly dependent on U.S. contractors such as
Boeing and Lockheed
These are not just any old jobs, like shelf-stacking or consultancy.
The men and women who work for BAE are highly skilled experts, the creme de la
creme of the British workforce.
Nor is that all. Over the past few decades BAE has been one of our largest
overseas earners, making tens of billions of pounds and countless millions in
tax for the government, without which it would be impossible to sustain
expenditure on schools and hospitals.
It is also important not to overlook BAE's strategic importance.
Ever since GEC (thanks to the negligence of the New Labour peer and GEC chairman
George Simpson) and Plessey vanished from the scene, Britain has relied on BAE
for its strategic defence capability.
Without BAE, we would be humiliatingly dependent on U.S. contractors such as
Boeing and Lockheed.
BAE Systems helps build the Eurofighter Typhoon, above
And so yesterday's news that the Serious Fraud Office wants BAE to be prosecuted
for corruption is not just a calamity for the company, its shareholders and the
men and women who work for it.
It is also a national disaster, with devastating consequences for British
domestic employment, overseas earnings, and our standing throughout the world.
It is doubtful whether BAE could easily survive paying the £1billion fine that
the SFO is reportedly demanding, nor the massive reputational damage that would
result.
Of course, we would all have to stomach this national calamity if BAE really was
corrupt and a disgrace to Britain. No one can condone corruption.
But is BAE really corrupt? Or is it about to become the victim of a gross
miscarriage of justice?
More...
More worryingly, is the Serious Fraud Office (known to readers of the satirical
magazine Private Eye as the Serious Farce Office) pursuing a deeply damaging
vendetta against one of Britain's greatest companies?
the international arms trade is a murky business. But in this murky world BAE
enjoys a ( comparatively) glistening reputation.
I would guess that its standards of conduct compare extremely well with those
you will find among most of its competitors - such as the Russian, Chinese,
French or American defence contractors.
There was barely a squeak of protest last year when one Chinese arms firm
breached international embargoes to ship lethal equipment and weapons to Robert
Mugabe, so that he could use them to suppress internal opponents.
The French, meanwhile, take a certain insouciant pride in their lack of morality
- there have been any number of arms scandals concerning French companies over
the years.
It is true that BAE - in common with every other arms firm in the world - uses
agents to sell its products.
These agents are without exception very well connected in the country where they
are doing business, and they can often demand substantial fees, especially if an
arms deal is successful.
We don't know for certain yet, but it is likely that these agents are at the
heart of the SFO's allegations of bribery and corruption in Tanzania, South
Africa, Romania and the Czech Republic dating back to the 1990s.
It may be extremely difficult for the SFO to prove that bribery took place, let
alone that BAE directors were aware of it.
I remember once on a visit to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum meeting a BAE
salesman eager to sell planes to the national air force.
I told him he had no chance because Sudan's aviation minister was also the agent
for a well-known U.S. company. He angrily insisted that this made no difference.
Of course it did. A year later I bumped into him again. He had lost his job -
and the U.S. company had won the contract.
The fact is that BAE is cleaner than most of its competitors and it is highly
unlikely that BAE directors are personally corrupt or have ever countenanced
bribery.
Yet news that the SFO is investigating BAE will be matter of celebration for its
more venal competitors.
They will not be able to believe their luck that of one of their biggest and
most respected competitors has been knocked out of the game.
The second mystery concerns the media handling of this story. The SFO did not
release its investigation into BAE in the normal way.
The official announcement came after 10am yesterday - but the BBC and other
newspapers were tipped off the night before, enabling Radio 4's Today programme
to line up a battery of critics, including the former International Development
Secretary Clare Short and LibDem MP Norman Lamb.
It is bad enough when a New Labour minister briefs the media ahead of making an
announcement to Parliament. But it is deeply shocking when the SFO starts to
play the same cynical games.
This raises the question of whether the SFO is waging a vendetta against BAE. It
is now almost three years since Tony Blair, rightly in my view, called off an
investigation into the relationship between BAE and Saudi Arabia, citing
security considerations.
It looks as if the SFO, since that setback, has simply diverted its attention to
other BAE deals.
BBC business reporters yesterday morning said Tony Blair's announcement was
deeply damaging to the 'morale' of the SFO. That may be so.
But what about the morale of the 30,000-plus BAE workers who face losing their
jobs in consequence of the SFO investigation?
Nobody seems to give a damn about them. What about the future of one of our
greatest companies?
It is easy for the LibDem Norman Lamb, or the former Labour minister Clare
Short, to advertise their personal integrity to the world by welcoming the SFO
investigation.
They live pampered lives, enriched by their generous MPs' expenses.
But out there in the real world one of our great companies is having its
reputation ruined while tens of thousands of men and women, with families to
support, face losing their jobs.
Who is going to speak up for them?
And who is going to ask the SFO why it is determined to apply rigid standards to
one of the finest names in British manufacturing which the French, the Italians
- indeed none of our major competitors - would ever dream of imposing.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1217567/PETER-OBORNE-BAE-targets-deeply-political-vendetta.html#ixzz0SnQoxgBQ
With acknowledgements to
Peter Osborne and Daily Mail.