I am more than happy to put it on the record that I am a critical friend of the Serious Fraud Office. Sometimes the emphasis is more on the word critical, especially after what we have seen in the newspapers today, with the crash of yet another serious fraud case because the SFO asked an agent, which clearly had a conflict of duty, to do its investigation. That is yet another mistake that the SFO has made. If we want the SFO to turn a corner, we need to do more than show good will. This Bill provided us with an opportunity to change things. It is unfortunate that more attention was not paid to changing corporate liability.
I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) said in his contribution, and I undertake to send him, as a Christmas present, Labour’s policy paper in relation to fraud. If we can change corporate liability to ensure that if an individual within an organisation behaves in a way that is dishonest and to the advantage of the larger organisation, we can prosecute the organisation, unless it can show, in the same way that it can under the Bribery Act 2010, that it has in place controls over its staff, it would have an impact on our banking system. If I may say so respectfully, introducing such legislation will have a greater impact than the measures proposed in this Bill. If we were to introduce a different form of corporate liability, we could increase the fines hugely, and that money could be ploughed back into the Serious Fraud Office. Then we would have an organisation of which people in the City of London would be afraid. They would be prepared in most circumstances to come to an agreement with the SFO to have a deferred prosecution agreement.
DPAs will not ever exist under the status quo. The DPA legislation has been passed but, as I understand it, no one has come forward to say that their company has been doing wrong, that they want to admit that, that they will pay a fine, that they will change their ways, that they want auditors to come and see how they are
behaving and that they will point out the individuals who have been behaving in a criminal way. I respectfully submit that that is how to change the culture. That is how we ought to be working and I look forward to discussing it with the hon. Member for Chichester once he has read the Christmas present I intend to send him. If elected in 2015, Labour intends to introduce its own economic crime Act, and I hope that we will take the issues further and develop them. Obviously, I would be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s reactions.