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Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, I greatly respect the noble Lord, Lord Lester, who has enormous expertise in a number of fields, but I am afraid that he is entirely right when he anticipates that my opinion on this is diametrically opposed to his. Put quite succinctly, I can think of nobody who has been first law officer of the Crown—that is the position of the Attorney-General—who would put politics before their duty to deal with the public interest. If they have made mistakes in this matter, I believe that those mistakes have been bona fide. I certainly had a long apprenticeship in this field. I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Lester, does justice to Lord Havers when, as Sir Michael Havers, he was Attorney-General. I remember being his PPS at the time. I think that the noble Lord has a personal view on this with which I cannot agree. The vital matter is that, when the Attorney-General takes any decision in the public interest, he is not acting as a party politician. If he or she were to allow themselves to act as party politicians, they would break the whole tradition and background of the office. It is not party considerations or the party interest that the Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General is considering; it is the public interest. Prosecution decisions par excellence are taken entirely in the public interest. Speaking personally, I have never had the slightest difficulty in knowing the difference between public and party interest and I believe that I never had the slightest difficulty in following the public interest. What is more, if an Attorney-General or a law officer strays from the narrow path that it is their absolute duty to follow, they are answerable in Parliament directly; indeed, they can be very severely criticised and should recognise that. To a far greater extent than the Directors of Public Prosecution, although they are excellent people who sometimes come before Select Committees or committees of this House or the other place, the law officers of the Crown are by tradition Members of one House or the other—as far as possible preferably of the other place—and are answerable as such. I believe that all that my noble friend’s amendment is seeking to do is to retain a position that is thoroughly well founded and ought to be retained. If, as my noble friend said, there is to be discussion on this, it should be full discussion in the very widest context. We should not use the Bill, which there is strong desire to support—I strongly desire to support it—to make a massive constitutional change, which I believe is deeply erroneous. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, raised the BAE case. I would be tempted to point out that actually the decision was taken by two public officials and not by the Attorney-General, although it was approved by the Attorney-General. I am not going to impugn either of those public officials—the director of the Serious Fraud Office or our ambassador in Saudi Arabia—in this context. This is a matter of immensely important principle and we should not seek to change the law here.