Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will look at Amendment 27 in the group. Does the Minister really know how this works? Let us suppose that we are talking about a paid informer who will give information to an enforcement agency—it does not matter which—about what is going on in his workplace. That is done at the moment under RIPA. Authorisation is obtained for a person to act as a CHIS—a covert human intelligence source—to find out what is going on and to be paid for it. The authorisation does not come from the Secretary of State, but from an authorising officer in the law enforcement agency. The officer will probably be of some seniority, but not necessarily at government level. It is just not practicable to put the burden of that authorisation on the Secretary of State. There are hundreds of informers and it simply could not be done that way: one must be able to rely on the provisions of RIPA, or the Scottish equivalent, in order to provide the defence. If that is what is intended, it is a very different matter from the warrant that is available to GCHQ or the intelligence services. That is carefully looked at by the Secretary of State and signed by him, or by a senior official in his absence. We are talking about two entirely different things. The scale is completely diverse. I hope that the Minister realises that this is not the same sort of situation as the one dealt with under the 1994 Act.