Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, Amendment 22 has been tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. The other amendments in the group are all in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Henley. As I have already said, we would prefer to knock out Clause 12 altogether, and that will be argued when we come to debate whether the clause should stand part. If the clause is not removed, however, we would at least want to narrow the circumstances in which the security services can legitimately pay bribes. The Security Service Act 1989, which is not amended in any way by this Bill, refers to the functions of these bodies as including the safeguarding of, ""the economic well-being of the United Kingdom"," and supporting the activities of law enforcement agencies. But we believe that for functions other than national security, it is inappropriate to permit or legitimate bribery by the security service organisations. It is clear from the OECD convention, which this country has signed up to, that the protection of the economy of the United Kingdom does not justify bribery, and indeed that was the issue at the root of the objections to the alleged activities of BAe. It is clear that bribery cannot legitimately be used by any organisation simply to obtain information that may safeguard the economy of the United Kingdom or which might lead to the retention of a valuable contract for the making of aeroplanes. That is clear from Article 5 of the OECD convention, and that was considered by the Joint Committee. The same broadly applies to the assistance of the prevention and detection of crime. In the case of crime, disclosure of criminal acts to a police force is most unlikely to be the improper behaviour of the person who makes a disclosure, as has already been said. A court could not possibly regard this as being an improper act by an employee or an associate of the company if they were simply informing a police organisation or any other similar body of what is itself wholly improper behaviour by the employer or the company. We simply do not think that there is any serious possibility—any possibility at all, really—of this being necessary to be included in Clause 12. In those circumstances, we believe that it is desirable to restrict the power to the narrow issue of national security, whether something is authorised or not. We do not think that it is appropriate to include any of these provisions other than those relating to national security in the powers of the security organisations under Clause 12(1)(b).