Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, I suspect that the Minister will be relieved to introduce a Bill from the Ministry of Justice at last that has not been met with dismay and criticism from all around the House. It is not, for once, one of those Christmas-tree Bills that we expect to come from that department, when this issue and that issue—all unrelated—are added together, leading to some rather confused debates on Second Reading and rather bad legislation at the end. It is not part of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, described in the Queen’s Speech debate as a "torrent" of legislation. It is a single-issue Bill that deals with one discrete subject. The Ministry of Justice should perhaps make more use of Bills referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, as clean-sweep Bills. That is a good description of a Bill that deals with just one issue and removes other Acts from the statute book, possibly making the statute book better. The noble Lord and his department will find it easier to get their legislation, which will be better legislation, should they follow that line in future. However, no one could accuse the Government of having produced this legislation in haste. My noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew complained that 10 weeks was perhaps too short a time for the committee to have considered the Bill and that a little more time might have been necessary. It has taken more than a decade for the Government to come up with this Bill since it was first promised. It was the Minister’s boss, now the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State, Jack Straw, who published a paper on consolidation and amendment of the Prevention of Corruption Acts in June 1998 only weeks after becoming Home Secretary. Although the Law Commission published a draft Bill in March 1998, it was not until March 2003 that Ministers laid their draft Corruption Bill before Parliament. We then had the Joint Committee, which was chaired, as many noble Lords, including my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, have said, by the late Lord Slynn. The committee, which was commissioned to examine the Bill, found that its approach to corruption was fundamentally flawed. The Bill was then withdrawn and the Law Commission was asked to draft a new Bill. It was not until March 2009—nearly 12 years after the Government first promised a unified corruption Act—that the draft Bribery Bill was published. That was then considered by the committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross. I join all Members who have spoken today in congratulating my noble friend on chairing that committee. I should say "the noble Lord", but I say "my noble friend" because many years ago I sat at his feet as his pupil, although I am not sure that much of his talent rubbed off on me. I congratulate the noble Lord on his committee’s report and those other Members of the House, including the noble Lords, Lord Goodhart and Lord Thomas of Gresford, my noble and learned friends Lord Lyell and Lord Mayhew, my noble friend Lord Onslow and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, on their sterling work on that committee.