Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, we will want to consider these matters very carefully. I will deal with the four amendments in the right order. I come first to Amendment 8, which would leave out "adequate" and is a purely probing amendment. Since I tabled it there have been further suggestions. My noble and learned friend, Lord Lyell, suggested that a word such as "reasonable" might be better than "adequate". I was much more interested to hear the noble and learned Lord himself use "appropriate", rather than "adequate" at one stage. I do not know whether that was intentional. Again, it might be worth looking at what the right word is. Although I will withdraw the amendment, because it is obviously ludicrous to take out "adequate" without putting something in its place, it might be something that we want to come back to in due course. More importantly, I move on to my Amendment 10 and Amendments 11 and 16 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Goodhart and Lord Thomas of Gresford. These are about guidance and seek to get that guidance—or at least an instruction that there should be guidance—in the Bill, as well as the idea that Parliament should look at the guidance one way or another in due course. Two points were made in interventions in the noble Lord’s speech that he ought to think hard about. One was from my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, who stressed that this will be taken into account by the courts in any prosecution and therefore is should be looked at by Parliament. For that reason, the amendments or some variation on them should be put in the Bill. The other point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, who pointed out—I mentioned this in my opening remarks—that this was an offence of strict liability, which is very unusual, particularly for a company. For that reason, he felt that it was important for Parliament to take a good look at it and incorporate amendments in the Bill. Although I will not press the amendments, as is customary at this stage and in this Room—where we can still smell smoke, although it is not billowing out—we will certainly want to have another look at them. Possibly we will want to discuss them with colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches. I note the assurance from the Government, which I think I have got right, that in advance of Report we will see a draft of the guidance.