UK drops plan to bid for Saudi Arabia prison contract

David Cameron writing to Saudis about pensioner facing 360 lashes over homemade wine

The British government has announced it is to cancel a £5.9 million (€7.9 million) contract to provide a training programme for prisons in Saudi Arabia.

In a significant victory for the justice secretary Michael Gove, whose attempts to cancel the project had been resisted by prime minister David Cameron and foreign secretary Philip Hammond, Mr Cameron's spokeswoman said the contract had been cancelled following a review.

“This bid to provide the additional training to Saudi Arabia has been reviewed and the government has decided that it won’t be proceeding with the bid,” she said. “The review has been ongoing following the decision that was announced earlier in September to close down the Just Solutions International branch of the ministry of justice that was providing some of these services.”

In another significant development, Downing Street also announced that the prime minister was to write to the Saudi authorities to raise his concerns about the case of Karl Andree, a 74-year-old grandfather who faces 360 lashes for transporting home-made wine in his car.

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Mr Cameron’s spokeswoman said: “This is an extremely concerning case. We have been providing consular assistance to Mr Andree and to his family since he was first arrested. We have raised the case repeatedly in recent weeks.

“Given the ongoing concerns and the fact we would like to see more progress, the PM is writing today to the Saudis to further raise the case on the back of action that was already being taken by the foreign office and by ministers there.”

A source at the foreign and commonwealth office said: “Mr Andree has served his sentence and we are urgently seeking his release as soon as possible without the corporal punishment taking place. The UK condemns the use of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment in all its forms.”

Commercial arm

The bid for the £5.9 million, six-month contract to design a training programme for Saudi prison officers was put in earlier this year by

Justice Solutions International

(JSI), the commercial arm of the Ministry of Justice.

This company was set up by the last justice secretary, Chris Grayling, to sell its expertise in prisons and probation – including in offender management, payment by results, tagging and privatisation – around the world.

In September, Mr Gove announced that he was closing down JSI, telling MPs it was because “of the need to focus departmental resources on domestic priorities”. Against his own wishes, he had to announce that the Saudi contract bid would go ahead because of the financial penalties involved, but when that reason was amended to Britain’s “best interests” it was widely assumed that Mr Hammond had overruled him.

It has now been confirmed that there was an intense cabinet debate over the issue in July with an exchange of letters between Mr Gove and Mr Hammond, with the justice secretary arguing that human rights concerns should come first and the foreign secretary accusing him of naivety and insisting that the “wider interests of the British government” were more important.

Michael Spurr, the chief executive of the national offender management service, told MPs only an hour before the announcement that talks were continuing with the Saudis and they were waiting to see if the bid "came to fruition". He said the contract involved advising the Saudis on how their prison officers should engage with their prisoners and while it would involve British staff visiting Saudi jails they would not be working in them.

Conference speech

The pressure on Mr Cameron to cancel the Saudi contract escalated when

Jeremy Corbyn

called on him in his first party conference speech as Labour leader to block the bid to provide training for the prison system that would carry out the execution of the pro-democracy protester Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr.

Mr Corbyn responded to the cancellation saying: “David Cameron has been shamed into a U-turn on this terrible contract, but why on earth was it set up in the first place? We should be sending a strong message to repressive regimes that the UK is a beacon for human rights and that this contract bid is unacceptable in the 21st century, and would damage Britain’s standing in the world.”

Guardian service