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Bribery Bill [HL]

My Lords, I should like very succinctly to support these amendments and the points that have been made. I start by endorsing the point of my noble friend Lord Goodlad that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, has always been unfailingly courteous. I am sure he will give this careful consideration and we shall listen most carefully to what he has to say. The dangers and corrosive effects of bribery have been perfectly put by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. It seems to me that there has to be some system of supervision and control by the Secretary of State and that there is an enormously strong case for the officers, whether of the Armed Forces or the security services, having the benefit of an authorisation procedure which will give them confidence that what they do will not lead to prosecution. There is a great deal of sense in the proposals that the Government should issue guidance. They will issue guidance in a great many areas, whether or not they are leaving matters to the discretion of the prosecuting authorities. The principal argument that seems to be made against these proposals is that there are so many authorisations that it is not practicable to give them. They can, however, be broken down into classes. The fact that you have to break some down into classes and the fact that some have to done at very short notice and under some general instruction is no argument, in my view, against a system of control. The system of control may not be perfect because a perfect system would completely upset the practical needs of the services. However, that is not an argument for no system of control. Indeed, the committee on which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, sits—he has great knowledge in this matter—calls for and receives a great many detailed records, and I cannot believe other than that careful records are kept of bribes that are made in all these circumstances and of the amounts that are spent.