---

Bribery Bill [HL]

As I understood the Minister, he said that the analysis by the Law Commission showed that it had not worked very well. But the cases—I can be corrected from those behind the Minister if he receives the information—of which there do not seem to be more than a dozen, are cases where people have tried to get out of their convictions in the Court of Appeal. I cannot bring to mind one case where a conviction was quashed on the basis of the argument about whether dishonesty ought to have been included. Even the definition of "corruption" which I read out today includes the word "dishonesty". That is the English dictionary direction. It has not been a practical problem. The Law Commission’s paper does not give any evidence that it was a practical problem, but if the Minister knows otherwise he will tell us.