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Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 14, I shall speak also to Amendments 15 and 16. I have returned with these amendments, as I promised to do at the end of our first day in Grand Committee. They would amend the Bill so that the Attorney-General would be, as now, the person who gives consent for a prosecution under the Bill. Clause 9 currently gives that right to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the director of the Serious Fraud Office and, in England and Wales, the Director of Revenue and Customs Prosecutions. Amendment 14 would restore the Attorney-General in England and Wales, Amendment 15 would restore her in her capacity as Attorney-General and Amendment 16 is consequential. I can be relatively brief. I set out my position clearly in Grand Committee and I will reiterate it today. I am not convinced that the case has fully been made by the Government for doing away with the Attorney-General as the law officer who makes the decision to prosecute bribery cases. Cases to be brought under the Bill are not likely to be numerous. They are likely to be big, complex and possibly controversial. That is the nature of some of the cases that we have seen in recent decades. The Saudi/BAE Systems affair was one such example referred to in that debate. It is because these cases are few but difficult that it is important to retain the role of the Attorney-General. I suggest that it will not put too great a burden on the Attorney-General’s office to deal with around a dozen cases per annum. However, if the Minister has good reason to suspect that that figure might be drastically unrealistic, I will certainly listen to his comments. In Committee, my noble and leaned friend argued passionately that, just because the integrity of politicians can be impugned, it is not a suitable response for politicians to accede to that and surrender our responsibility. Rather, politicians should be willing to uphold the integrity of a constitutionally respected office. That the Attorney-General sits in government is not weakness, even if that should not be the norm among fellow members of the OECD, which has raised questions about the position. It is an established strength of our system that a law officer as senior as the Attorney-General is directly answerable to Parliament. It is to this place or another that the Attorney-General must come to answer difficult questions about difficult decisions. In our view, that is right. In Grand Committee, I suggested that if the Government wished to tinker with the constitution they should await the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill in which to do so. We still await that Bill. However, they have decided to press ahead with the proposals in this Bill. Therefore, it is right that we should have this debate today on the Floor of your Lordships’ House.