Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, once again we have had an interesting debate in which there has been no support for the Government. There is criticism of what the Government are proposing in Clause 12 in the powers covered by Amendment 22. I have made my arguments on that and I do not want to resume them, but I want to mention some of the other amendments in the group. Amendment 23 is more limited than our Amendment 22, because it does not eliminate the right to legitimate bribes in cases involving serious crime. However, it strikes out the provisions of Clause 12 that extend to cases where there is potential bribery for the purpose not of preventing damage to national security or of preventing crime, but of preventing something that will damage the British economy. Both my Amendment 22 and Amendment 23 of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, remove the possibility of legitimating bribery for economic reasons. I believe that that is required by the OECD convention, which we should plainly stick to. I understand that there may be an overlap between the three different purposes here, but it is absolutely clear that bribery to protect our economic well-being is not, on its own, a ground for bribery. If the damage to the British economy comes through a fear of a terrorist programme to blow up some of our leading industrial works, it is obvious that that would fall within the national security exemption, and it would not matter that it was also causing damage to the economy. The fact that it causes damage to the economy is not an automatic bar if there are threats to national security. That argument is wholly irrelevant. I have already said why I think that we should also omit the provision for crime, as well as damage to the economy. Damage to the economy may perfectly well be a matter for the security services to investigate and try to obtain information about. Nothing that I have said would alter that. That remains a power, but to use that power by means of bribery is wholly inappropriate. The other matter that raised debate is Amendment 27, which requires the authorisation. I think something has gone a bit wrong with this amendment because it appears to require an authorisation before the defence can be raised. It seems to me, and most of those who have spoken on this issue have assumed this, that the authorisation would be required before the bribery took place. That is an entirely different situation, and while I can certainly see objections to authorisation acting purely as a pre-requirement to the prosecution, which is what was done with Clause 13 and the provisions in our report, I am persuaded that there are justifiable reasons—