Government has repeatedly stated that there were no irregularities in respect of the Arms Deal - yet we continue on a weekly basis to be confronted with allegations of extensive corruption, most recently by the revelation that President Mbeki received R30 million on behalf of the ANC from a German arms company.

This allegation was predictably and unconvincingly denied; tellingly no defamation action has yet been launched by the President - this only serves to reinforce the perception that the President and the government are worried that any independent scrutiny of this rotten deal will reveal extensive wrongdoing.

It is for this reason that the President most likely refuses to appoint an independent inquiry into the arms deal and why government continues to obstruct and prevent access to relevant documents by international investigatory agencies. If there really are no irregularities, then government should have no reason to prevent those documents from being scrutinised, or for an open inquiry to take place.

I would also like to challenge today the Speaker of this House and ANC Chairperson, Baleka Mbete to stop stonewalling my efforts to gain access to a number of Department of Defence documents currently being kept by the Sergeant at Arms. I have every reason to believe that these documents may point to large-scale irregularities and corruption associated with the Arms Deal.

So far my numerous written requests to the Speaker, requesting access to these documents have fallen on deaf ears. What has government - or Parliament for that matter - got to hide that my requests to examine these documents have met with silence? Can any representative of the Speaker's Office or the Speaker herself give me a satisfactory reason?

This is the prepared text of the statement by Eddie Trent MP, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on the arms deal, National Assembly, Cape Town, August 21 2008