Bribery Bill [Lords]

We had a good opportunity in Committee to debate the important issues relating to consent to prosecution. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) argued in Committee, as he has done here, that the offences under the Bill are sufficiently serious to justify vesting responsibility for consenting to a prosecution to the Attorney-General rather than to the director of the relevant prosecuting authority. Under existing prevention of corruption Acts, consent to prosecution is given by the Attorney-General, but those Acts were passed a century or more ago when there was no Director of Public Prosecutions or Serious Fraud Office. We are repealing those outdated Acts and starting with a clean sheet. In doing so, it is right and proper that we consider objectively whether consent to prosecution should be given by the Attorney-General or by the director of the relevant prosecuting authority. We have a choice that our predecessors did not have in 1889 and 1906. The offences in the Bill will cover a wide range of conduct. I agree that some will be very serious, but others will be less so. On any objective examination of the issue, the offences in this Bill are not ones that require the Attorney-General's consent. To the extent that any given case engages issues of national security, the Attorney-General's superintending powers are such as to enable her to intervene. The hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) is correct to highlight that. I accept, however, that the question of whether to consent to a prosecution for one of the offences in the Bill can give rise to more difficult and sensitive considerations than is normally the case. For this reason, I see an argument for special arrangements to apply in this instance. Government amendment 7 would therefore require that the function of consenting to a prosecution must be exercised personally by the director of the relevant prosecuting authority, and a director would not be able to delegate the function to other prosecutors. That said, of course we need to make some provision for the function to be exercised where the director is unavailable—for example, if the director was incapacitated or out of the country for a considerable number of days. The amendment therefore enables the DPP, the director of the Serious Fraud Office and the director of Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office to nominate another person to act when the director is unavailable. In the case of the DPP for Northern Ireland, the amendment preserves the position whereby the deputy director has all the powers of the DPP, but neither the director nor deputy director will be able to delegate the consent function under the Bill to another person. I welcome the comments by the hon. Member for Huntingdon that he is looking favourably upon Government amendment 7 and the similar views expressed by the hon. Member for Cambridge on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. We believe that the amendment is an equitable middle way on the issue, and on that basis I commend it to the House.