Bribery Bill [Lords]

I am glad to have that clarification. That is a significant step forward by the Conservatives from the position put forward at least by their Back Benchers in the other place. If the issue is now only about the content of the guidance, we have made considerable progress, and I welcome that. The specific offence of bribing a foreign official is of immense importance in the fight against corruption, especially in developing countries. As hon. Members on both sides of the House have implied, there is a clear link between corruption and poverty. To see that link, one need only go to the examples of cases under the existing law. The Mabey and Johnson case, which was settled last year, involved millions of pounds in bribes paid by an infrastructure company in third world countries such as Jamaica and Ghana, with accusations relating to a country as poor as Papua New Guinea. It ended up with those countries spending tens of millions of pounds on projects that they could ill afford as a result of bribery. Countries that could not afford to waste a penny ended up wasting millions. It is clear from the BAE cases that there is a similar problem. Obviously, I cannot go into the detail of the cases that are subject to the injunction that was successfully applied for overnight, so I cannot talk about the South African or eastern European cases. The hon. Member for City of York has already mentioned the Saudi Arabian case. However, we can mention the Tanzanian case, where there is no dispute about what the problem was. In that case, there was a £28 million contract for a military air traffic control system, and a third of that money disappeared into offshore accounts. The problem was not only that the system was out of date and did not work very well, but that it was a military system for a country that did not even have an air force and could have bought a far cheaper and better civilian system. What happened as a result was not only a matter of concern for the public authorities here but of immense concern as regards the waste of resources in a very poor country. I should add my voice to those who have pointed out that this goes beyond the problem of corruption and the wasting of resources in individual cases. Systematic corruption undermines the market economy in general. A country where bribes are regularly asked for and given is one where, ultimately, economic confidence will collapse and international investment will become very difficult. The problem requires international action in the developed world. The money for corruption comes from companies in the western world, but those companies lobby against legislative action. They say, "Jobs are at stake" or "If we don't do it, someone else will." That is precisely why we have the OECD convention and international co-ordination. As we heard during the speech by the hon. Member for City of York, the problem is not that Britain is forging ahead and other countries are not doing anything, but quite the opposite. This country has come under pressure from the OECD to improve its performance. In 2008, the OECD said that""current UK legislation makes it very difficult for prosecutors to bring an effective case against a company"." Other concerns have emerged in the light of the BAE cases.