Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, we have made the point that if it is that simple, it is exactly the same as the assurance we have given and it is not necessary. That is the view we take on the guidance. We do not see the value of putting it on the face of the Bill. I come now to a more important point. It seems to me that some of the probings of noble Lords have suggested that we are proposing case-by-case guidance. We are not proposing that, and I want to make it quite clear that this guidance will be about the procedures that businesses adopt in order to show in a particular case that they had those procedures in place and therefore they can pray them in aid with the defence that is contained in Clause 7. I hope that I have covered the point about size and resources. Later in our discussions, we will come to the alternative approach put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Henley. We believe that the crime as set out in Clause 7 means that businesses will be able to take a proportionate response, judging by their own exposure to bribery the extent to which they will need to commit resources. Highly exposed companies will sensibly commit significant resources to these proposals and companies with low risk will not have to commit such large resources. It will be about the risk, frankly. If you are trading in a business that has this risk, whether you are big or small you have to take appropriate procedures to protect yourself. The law is framed to allow for that proportionality and allows individual firms to make their own judgments on proportionality. A number of noble Lords took the view that the guidance would be something that courts could take account of—I will not be more precise than that. We accept that the guidance will have that role. My noble friend Lord Borrie wanted me to tie it into BIS. It is not currently our intention to do that: it is our intention that the Ministry of Justice will create the guidance initially. However, we see the Ministry of Justice working together with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to produce the guidance. At that point, there was an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Henley, who said that I am a world expert on secretaries of state. I remind him that that had nothing to do with changing laws. In that particular case, the Secretary of State would personally take responsibility for significant powers, which was unusual and unprecedented. I am still smarting from the number of occasions that he ridiculed our excellent drafting on that matter. Finally we were asked whether it would be a statutory instrument. No, it will not and it will not come before Parliament. I hope that I have at least answered many the questions raised.