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Bribery Bill [HL]

I have no difficulty in making it clear that the classes would need to be quite closely defined. We included this only on the basis that the Government said that there would be many such cases requiring authorisation. Let us look at the position. This is a general law that the Government are promoting and asking Parliament to enact, and they want to make exceptions for themselves, for agencies of the Government and for the Armed Forces. The rule of law suggests that the Government should obey the law like everyone else, so they have in mind a very important innovation here. In previous cases relating to the security services, there has been an authorisation. When the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, brought me to a temporary halt, I think I was saying that the Government had an authorisation procedure in their original proposals. I think I am right in saying that there was an authorisation procedure in the draft Bill—the original formulation of this Bill—that they put forward. They must have known then how many cases there would be, and they must also have had at least an idea of the sorts of cases that they had in mind. They were, after all, framing the policy and they did not seem altogether overawed by that possibility. It is true that, since then, the scope of the defences in Clause 12 have been somewhat enlarged. Of course, the government amendment yet to be moved restricts them again, although not as completely as was the case in their first proposal. However, the Army and the security services are to remain. The claim that the Government are introducing so many breaches of the law as to require some extraordinary procedure is quite important. I strongly believe that the authorisation procedure, which hitherto has been sanctioned by Parliament, is the correct way forward. If the Government can assure us that class descriptions are not required because the number of cases is so well defined that class descriptions are not necessary, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and I will be the happier for that. We included the class system to deal with the suggestion that a lot of cases—perhaps rather small ones—required to be dealt with, and the essence of these cases, and the basis on which they are going forward, must be known to the Government and be a government responsibility. I suggest that this is an extremely important situation in principle and that if government agencies breach what otherwise would be the law governing them, the Government need to take responsibility for authorising that. That is what the amendment would do. The authorisation is challengeable in Parliament in the sense that authorisations can be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, but our amendments do not preclude the possibility of a prosecution. We have said that there will be no defence under Clause 12 without the authorisation. In my submission, the constitutional position and the need to respect the rule of law is very well protected in our amendments, and I sincerely hope that the Government will consider them seriously. I do not think that we want to vote on these matters this evening. However, I certainly want to feel that the Government are taking this extremely seriously and will give us a good reason why the procedure for authorising departures from the law by government agencies—namely, to use the authorisation procedure in advance—is not appropriate in this case.