Bribery Bill [Lords]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was trying to skirt around it as well as I could, but you are absolutely right: we cannot get any further into that without straying into an area where we should not go. It is good that the Government have got this far with the Bill despite all the lobbying and pressure over the years, but it comes very late in the day. There is a risk, given how far we are into the Parliament, that it will not make it on to the statute book before the end of the Parliament. I hope that that is not its fate and that we are able to get it fully into law very quickly. There are still some problems that we should discuss in Committee to try to find ways through them. One of those is to do with the role of the Attorney-General. The hon. Member for City of York is right that the Bill removes the consent power of the Attorney-General and transfers it to the directors of the Serious Fraud Office and the Director of Public Prosecutions. That is an advance, and a very good thing, for the reasons that he gave: there should not be political interference in such prosecutions. The OECD is on record as saying that it is worried about the lack of independence in our system. However, the problem remains at a slightly different level. Because the role of the Attorney-General was not reformed during the passage of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which had its Third Reading yesterday, the Attorney-General retains, despite what is in the Bribery Bill, a power of superintendence over the directors, and that power could be used in a politically motivated way. We still need to go further to protect the directors from that possibility. The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield was worried about what would happen to accountability if we did go further, because if the roles were separated out entirely, the Government would be able only to issue public guidance to the prosecutors, and unable to influence individual cases. If an individual case were decided in a particular way—to prosecute or not to prosecute—the Attorney-General would be able to say in this House, "I've given guidance, but it's not up to me to decide how to apply it in a particular case." That is a problem, but to leave the situation as it is, as the hon. and learned Gentleman suggested, would not be a solution. He gave the impression that the Law Officers—the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General—already have a proper degree of accountability in this House for that sort of decision, but that is not so. The hon. Member for City of York mentioned the BAE case—the al-Yamamah case—where the previous director of the SFO took the decision not to continue with an investigation. We can see from the correspondence that was published as part of the court cases that the decision was taken under immense pressure from Ministers, from the Prime Minister downwards, but what technically happened was that the director himself eventually took the decision. When it came to the debates in this House and the other place, the Law Officers therefore said, "But we didn't do it. We take responsibility for the letters that we wrote, but it was not our decision in the end." Even in the existing system, that degree of accountability is not in place, so we cannot stay where we are. The hon. and learned Gentleman rightly mentioned the missing clauses of the Bill about parliamentary privilege. I understand why the Government have placed that in the "too difficult" box, but there is a connection between what happens in this House under parliamentary privilege and the powers and responsibilities of the Law Officers. We have to get that sorted out completely at some stage. Since we are all agreeing so much, I do not want to say much more, but I do wish to mention the problems that have been raised in relation to clause 13. The original exemption for the armed forces, law enforcement and the secret services was too wide, and I am grateful to the Government for the removal at least of the exemption for law enforcement. However, there are still some problems, one of which was identified in Justice questions by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming). He pointed out the anomaly that, as clause 13 stands, it will be lawful for a secret service official, in particular, to bribe an official of the French Government but not one of the Scottish Government. That cannot be right. More serious is the breadth of the immunity given to the secret services in clause 13. Like other hon. Members, I accept that there is a need for some protection, but it is important to remember that our secret services are charged with protecting not just national security but economic welfare. In that regard, it does not seem satisfactory to say, as the Secretary of State did, that it is all very complicated because there are overlaps between the various responsibilities. That does not work as an argument, because all that we need is for one of them to be protected. The problem with the existing draft of the clause is that when the only function being exercised is the economic one, without any overlap, it is entirely possible that that will be sufficient to attract immunity. I would prefer to preclude that possibility, for precisely the reasons that the hon. Member for City of York mentioned. We need to preclude completely any possibility of the clause being used as cover for any sort of arms supply. I suppose that there is an outside possibility of the armed forces provision being used in that way as well. I wish to mention a problem with clause 13 that I do not believe has been brought up so far. It has so far been discussed in the context of the giving of bribes by the secret services or the armed forces, and one can see the arguments for that. However, it will also protect them from the effect of clause 2, which is about receiving bribes. Clause 2 was not properly discussed in the other place, so we have not yet heard a proper explanation as to why it is necessary for there to be a general legal protection on receiving bribes and for what purpose it is a good idea for our armed forces to accept bribes. I ask the Government to consider that in Committee. This is a good Bill, although it needs some more tightening. I am happy to say to the Government that we will support them in any amendments that tighten it, and in resisting any attempts to loosen it. I wish to end, as the hon. Member for City of York did, on money. Improving the law is a very good thing, but the law by itself is not the same as an effective policy. For that, it is necessary for the authorities that are charged with the responsibility of enforcing the law to have the resources that they require. This might be wrong, but I am informed that for the past 12 to 18 months, the Serious Fraud Office has received not one penny from the Treasury for its anti-corruption work, and is transferring money internally from its anti-fraud work to its anti-corruption work. That is not satisfactory, and I want an assurance from the Government that the SFO and all the relevant authorities have the Government's real backing, not just through the changes to the law in this excellent Bill but through providing the resources that they need to do their job.