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Financial Crime: Legislation

My Lords, I thank all those who took part in the debate, which showed once again the extraordinary sweep of experience in this House. I agree with my noble friend Lord Sassoon that the debate has been searching and constructive. I thank him personally because what he said laid to rest many concerns and fears that noble Lords had about the implementation of the Bribery Act. That will be appreciated also in overseas circles, for which I am very grateful. I end by saying that on the walls of my sitting-room I had a series of lithographs by William Hogarth called ““The Election””. I am picking up on what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, said when he reminded us that corruption and bribery are hardly new actors on the stage. It was perhaps appropriate that the whole set of lithographs was stolen; that seemed to be the proper end. The series was a reminder of how strong corruption in the democratic system was in the 17th and 18th centuries. We came out of that primarily because of the extraordinarily powerful legislation laid down for public service towards the end of the 19th century by William Gladstone and other famous Prime Ministers. It is perhaps worth putting on record our gratitude to public servants, in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, expressed, for their consistent very high standards and moral quality. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, for what he said about the need for us to be more aware of a moral dimension to what we do in the financial and economic world—and, indeed, more generally—and about the danger that we could be slowly undermined by failing to pay attention to it, failing to bring our legislation up to date and failing to take it sufficiently seriously. I thank him for what he contributed to the debate and I thank all noble Lords who took part. Motion withdrawn.