Bribery Bill [Lords]

No, no, I am not, and I am certainly not doing so on something as esoteric as this. However, I came to the view—I am clear about this—that this provision is both unnecessary and undesirable. The other place accepted the case for the defence clause, but what it did, not as an alternative, but as an addition, was decide to put in place a discretionary ministerial authorisation scheme, and that now forms subsections (6) and (14) of clause 10. What are the defects of those provisions? One defect is that they would sanction conduct covered by the offence at clause 6 of the Bill, which is derived from the OECD's convention on combating bribery of foreign public officials. The Bill as originally drafted did not allow for that possibility. We could put that defect right, but what cannot be put right is the ill-conceived hybrid arrangement, which seeks to combine an optional authorisation scheme with an existing defence. The arrangement is neither one thing nor the other, and thus creates uncertainty about its legal and practical effects and, in the process, undermines the purpose of clause 13. I remember sitting in this House before I had responsibility for any of the intelligence agencies and sometimes thinking that I was being asked to take on trust undertakings being given in this place by Ministers who say that they know it all but that they cannot communicate what they know. Mostly we did take things on trust from distinguished members of the previous Administration such as Lord Hurd and Lord Howe, and rightly so. Some people have the idea that the intelligence agencies operate in highly regular circumstances—it is a highly regulated system—whereby they have the time to consider individual applications for actions out in the field and these can then be weighed in the balance and an authorisation sought for them prospectively. All that is true in respect of activities by the agencies that are covered by warrantry, which include interception of different kinds and intrusive surveillance. However, some of their actions are inevitably fast-moving—people must have authority at a point at which they are exercising sensible discretion on behalf of the state. The previous authorisation scheme, which the Joint Committee did not like, was cast to take account of the necessary flexibility that is required by the agencies. It is paralleled by section 7 of the 1994 Act. This provision, however, is far too specific and would jam up the system. I remind the House that there is already intensive supervision of the work of the agencies. Each of the substantive Acts—the 1989, 1994 and 2000 Acts—provides for there to be commissioners who are retired senior members of the judiciary, typically and usually retired Court of Appeal judges, who scrutinise the various aspects of the agencies. Having been subject to their scrutiny, I can tell the House that that is not something that they take lightly. No sensible Secretary of State takes it lightly, and neither do the agencies. Of course, a lot of what they do cannot see the light of day, although they publish redacted reports, but it is extremely important. With the mechanisms for external accountability in place, in addition to a robust system of internal checks that are partly prompted by the external checks, there is then a powerful onus on the individuals concerned who are carrying out and authorising operations to demonstrate and be satisfied that the proposed action is both necessary and proportionate. Our view, which the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Claire Ward)—who has just disappeared from the Chamber—will be urging the Committee to accept, is that the defence, when combined with these existing oversight mechanisms, provides an appropriate level of accountability. In providing a purely discretionary authorisation scheme, the Lords amendment to clause 10 at one level arguably adds nothing but its effect would be—I promise the House—to add confusion and uncertainty. However, through my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, I shall consider whether we can provide further assurance to the House that there is effective oversight of the conduct of the intelligence services and armed forces that engages the clause 13 defence. I hope that the House will accept what I have said. I also hope that it will accept the good advice of, for example, Transparency International. As a senior Minister in this Government I have responsibilities for getting a Bribery Bill on the statute book, but as a senior Minister—not least as one who has had responsibility for the various agencies over a nine year period—I also have a responsibility to ensure that those agencies can operate effectively and sensibly. I hope that Members of the House will not allow the best, in their view, to be made the enemy of the good. We cannot put on the statute book a Bill that, in dealing with one mischief—bribery—creates a worse mischief, undermining the effective, proportionate and lawful work of the agencies. Transparency International said that it believed that the issue about clauses 13 and 10""should not be allowed to derail the Bill"." That is good advice. The Bill will put in place a coherent, comprehensive framework of criminal law. It will make it abundantly clear that bribery has no place in this country and that it will not be tolerated in our commercial and other dealings with the rest of the world. Those are aims to which the whole House, I hope, can subscribe, and I hope that we can now get on and pass the Bill. I commend it to the House. House resumed.