UK ditches plan to bid for £5.9m Saudi Arabia prisons contract
And a good thing too. Who the heck thought it was a good idea for us to be helping one of the must brutal regimes on earth trample over pretty much every human right there is? Apparently Michael Gove had a lot to do with the bid being dropped. I'm no fan of him but I have to congratulate him on doing the right thing.

I'd guess this is a conflation of issues that made scrapping the idea the only real option.

Cameron was being very publicly linked to Saudi Arabia via the prisoner, and here was a side story that would ensure it stayed in the news in a manner he couldn't spin. Corbyn was getting mileage out of it, and there they were trying to be Tory New Labour