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Bribery Bill [HL]

I intervene briefly to say to the Government that we welcome their amendment to delete subsection (1)(a) from Clause 12, which goes a long way to meeting a great many of our concerns, particularly following the meetings that the Minister was happy to arrange between us and his colleagues in the department. I have only one question to put to the Minister, which he possibly partially answered in his opening remarks. "Law enforcement agency" includes a wide number of bodies, among them the police. I think that he would accept that paying for information can be a useful weapon in the fight against crime. Will the police have from now on to rely entirely on prosecutorial discretion to avoid prosecution on occasions when they find it necessary to offer bribes for what might be termed "legitimate purposes"?