Bribery Bill [HL]

I will speak to Amendments 1 to 4, which are happily grouped together. Indeed, I suggested that they should be grouped together when I tabled them. The amendments seek to add to the Bill the overall comment that bribery should be an offence that should carry, as an essential ingredient, the requirement that it be exercised or committed with corrupt intent. I put down as an alternative that it should be committed dishonestly, but I put forward my "dishonestly" aspect more as a probing amendment. I put it down because I spoke at Second Reading on the relevance of dishonesty and its closeness to corruption. I thought it would be helpful, rather than just to leave it out, to let us explore that so that I can better explain the value to the Bill of adding the words "corruptly" or "with corrupt intent". The exact words can be better dealt with by the parliamentary draftsmen, but it is the objective of adding "corrupt intent" that I hope to persuade the Committee to adopt. Transparency International has absolutely nothing to fear from the addition of these words. I am very glad to see both the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, in their places.