Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, like others, I am struck by the difference between the draft Bill and the Bill now before us. The draft legislation was rather aptly headed, ""Authorisations for intelligence services"." It is true, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, has said, that the Joint Committee was opposed to this, but the Government have taken a consistent view on the issue of the intelligence services. They maintained at the time that it was necessary, they maintained it in their response to the Joint Committee, and they have maintained it again today. Although of course I subscribed to the Joint Committee report, I must say that I understand the Government’s concern about the intelligence services. We will see about that when we come on to that, but this amendment does not deal strictly with that, it deals with the law enforcement agencies—words which did not appear anywhere in the draft Bill examined earlier. Like my noble friend Lord Colville, I think that we need to know why the Government have extended the defence in this new form—in a completely different form from that in the draft Bill—to this further category. It certainly requires a considerable effort of will to understand why that is necessary. I stand by the position I took on the draft Bill, but I have sympathy with the Government on the broad point about protecting the public interest in relation to the functions of the Security Service. However, I am not too sure why it is necessary to introduce all these other people into the defence for bribery offences. We definitely need an explanation of that.