National Interest and private justice

The court has ruled that the Government/Serious Fraud Office was wrong to end investigation into the "arms to Saudi Arabia" case.

I can understand what was at stake. What we call bribes, others might call facilitation payments. If now such payments became public, we could lose valuable future sales (probably to a neighbouring country which has no scruples about using these payments.) If the investigation proceeds, and if bribery is uncovered then we could lose nationally.

But now the Government, supported by the Conservatives, is preparing to give powers to the Attorney General to override international agreements we have made not to use bribery, as well as other issues, if it is in the interest of national security.

Who defines national security? I suspect it could easily come to mean, "Anything which would embarrass the Government if it all became public". The precedent is the legal advice which told Blair it would be legal to invade Iraq, advice which Blair has always refused to publish in full.

Quite apart from inconvenience to the Government, there is the issue of private justice. The arms to Iraq question emerged when British manufacturers, encouraged by the Government, exported materials and later were threatened with prosecution. Government embarrassment or private punishment?

If, as a private citizen, I have a legitimate claim to a righting of an injustice but this is not allowed to be prosecuted because someone somewhere judges that it would not be in the national interest, how near are we to some of the abuses of Marxism as we have seen it practiced?

Two thousand years ago some Jewish leaders prosecuted and helped towards the crucifixion of the man from Nazareth, because it was "expedient that one man should die.... for the nation."

What on earth are the Conservatives doing, in supporting a permanent principle that the Government of the day can simply, by declaring it to be in the national interest, suspend the working of the legal system? This seems a slippery slope to something not nice.