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Bribery Bill [HL]

In the Joint Committee I supported the Government’s position, as did the Joint Committee itself, that we should include these facilitation payments within the scope of bribery. Like others, I had some hesitation, but the reason for it is that we are introducing a ground-breaking Bill and we want to maximise its impact on bribery and its prevention. We also want to avoid exceptions as far as possible. That is an advantage and we should stick with it. I support the Government’s position on this, as I did before. On two earlier occasions—in the Joint Committee and in Grand Committee—we discussed this and I expressed some anxiety about what might happen on the ground. There will go on being facilitation payments; there is no way that we will stop those all over the world. American exporters have an advantage in being able to pay some such facilitation payments without any chance of prosecution. There are some problems on the ground. What do we have to do? In this case, we have genuinely to rely on prosecutorial discretion. We have discussed it rather a lot this afternoon, sometimes adversely and sometimes favourably, but this is a case where it should be applied. There will be some facilitation payments which are minimal and it would be ridiculous to prosecute them. The advantage of the overall coverage of these payments within the definition of bribery is greater than the slight problems that arise on the application of prosecutorial discretion. Finally, like the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, I find that this is a gallant attempt by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, but the wording would give rise to difficulty. I expect many of us in this House are tempted to say that what is modest in amount for a banker’s bonus is not modest in amount for most Members of this House. Such phrases are not easy to implement. It is, in any event, a probing amendment, but I have made my position on it clear.