Bribery Bill [HL]

The noble and learned Lord makes a good point. We should not forget that prosecutorial discretion always exists under the law. When considering the case in or his or her independent way, the prosecutor will obviously have to have in mind the defence in the Act in deciding whether or not a prosecution is appropriate in the circumstances. Given that the defence will be on the statute book—I am being frank with the Committee—we expect that many cases might end there. However, it would not preclude a trial if the prosecutor decided that a prosecution was appropriate, in which case the issues raised by the noble and learned Lord would come about and the court would have to find a way of dealing with extraordinarily sensitive evidence. However, we do not anticipate that that would happen very often.