Bribery Bill [HL]

Will the noble Lord accept from me, as the only member of the Constitution Committee here today, that it certainly intended to address the question of prior authorisation for the act of bribery, which, as I think the Minister suggested, must be the logical position? Whether it is the appropriate policy is a different matter. I hope it is in order to ask whether the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, could confirm my understanding that the Joint Committee did not reject, as a matter of procedure, prior authorisation. I think the Minister suggested that this was the case. I understood the Joint Committee simply to reject in paragraph 203 the substance of the suggestion in the draft Bill that there should be, for domestic intelligence services, an authorisation to bribe. There was no rejection, as I understand it, of the desirability of a prior authorisation procedure if it were appropriate to have a defence for acts of bribery in this context. Have I misunderstood this?