Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford and I have put our names to Amendment 21. In doing so, I make it clear that we regard the terms of the amendment as more than a probing amendment. As we now stand, it will be almost certainly be our intention to ensure that the amendment is brought back on Report when it can be properly voted on. The draft Bill, which we studied at the time of the Joint Committee, provides in Clause 13 that bribery would not be an offence if it was authorised by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State could authorise bribery only if and in so far as it was necessary to the proper discharge of the functions of MI5, MI6 or GCHQ. The Joint Committee was not satisfied that bribery should be legitimated, even on the basis of there being an authorisation from the Secretary of State. I shall read what the Joint Committee said about that in paragraph 203 on page 68 of Volume 1 of the report on the draft Bribery Bill, and I should repeat, as I have said several times before, that the report of the Joint Committee was unanimous: ""We heard no persuasive evidence of a need for the domestic intelligence agencies to be granted an authorisation to bribe. Neither are we persuaded that this draft Bill is the appropriate vehicle to extend the security services’ powers to contravene the criminal law. Finally, we note continuing doubt about whether clause 13 complies with the United Kingdom’s international obligations, despite the fact that this issue was raised as long ago as 2003. For all these reasons we recommend that the Government remove clauses 13 and 14"." The Government did not accept that recommendation by the Joint Committee. Not only did they not accept it, they came back with a new clause, Clause 12 of the present version of the Bill, which extended the power to bribe legally. Under Clause 12, not only are the security services exempted from liability for bribery if it is in the proper exercise of their functions, but Clause 12 also extends the exemption to law enforcement agencies and the Armed Forces when on active service. I regard this as extraordinary. My noble friend and I will object to the inclusion of any part of Clause 12 when we come to the debate that Clause 12 should stand part; of course, we recognise that we cannot vote on that here. If Clause 12 is removed, that would get us back to the recommendation of the Joint Committee that the Bill should not contain legal exemption from bribery for anyone. Our amendments in this group and the two groups that follow would exclude the exemption of the law enforcement agencies and the armed services. The amendments in this group, starting with Amendment 21, apply to the law enforcement agencies and remove them from the scope of Clause 12. That is plainly appropriate. The Serious Fraud Office and a senior representative of the police both said, in written evidence to the Joint Committee, that the exemption should not apply to them; I refer to paragraphs 191 and 321 of the evidence volume of our report. The exemption from the bribery law is anyway unnecessary for the law enforcement agencies. It cannot be improper for someone with information that may lead to the conviction of criminals to disclose that information to the police, so neither the police nor the person who makes a disclosure can be prosecuted for the offence of bribery even if the police offer rewards for the information that they have received. There is absolute no need to retain Clause 12(1)(a). I strongly agree with the views here expressed by the Constitution Committee. I repeat, slightly more fully than the noble Lord, Lord Henley: ""Drawing the defence in terms as wide as this jeopardises the constitutional principle of the rule of law. Unless compelling evidence is produced as to why clause 12(1)(a) is necessary in respect of each of the law enforcement agencies to which it may apply, it should be omitted"." The other amendments in this group—29, 32 and 33—are purely consequential, and would remove parts of Clause 12 that would become irrelevant if Clause 12(1)(a) were removed.