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Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will not take up the House’s time in repeating exactly what I said in Committee, but I should like to draw back to the attention of the House the historical context of the role of the Attorney-General. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, does not really return us to a hallowed constitutional safeguard. The concept of the Attorney-General dates from, I think, 1906 when there was no DPP to deter vexatious private prosecutions. One of the things that the DPP does is to do exactly that. The other point that I think the House ought to recognise is that prosecutions for bribery will not always be of such magnitude as the BAE case. There will be a lot of small cases to which it is entirely appropriate for the DPP to consent, as he does on numerous other occasions. I think, finally, that the reason why the OECD singled out the role of the Attorney-General in our case as not complying with the convention on bribery was exactly because the Attorney-General is, of necessity, also a politician. This was not a reflection on any individual Attorney-General, but there are many like me who are uneasy at the thought of the Attorney-General consenting to individual prosecutions and, for that matter, defending individual prosecutions in either this House or the other place.