Bribery Act 2010: Post-legislative Scrutiny (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Fookes Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fookes (Con) [V]]

My Lords, when I joined the committee, I had had no previous experience of post-legislative scrutiny. I came away from it greatly impressed by the value of this form of consideration. As we have had ample evidence of this afternoon, the House of Lords seems brilliantly equipped to undertake such inquiries. Having listened to many other speakers, it seems to me that there would be definite value in resurrecting this process in another five years or so to see how matters have developed. It is clear that the Act itself is remarkably good legislation, but how it is implemented and develops seems worthy of consideration further down the line.

One point that concerned me during our taking of evidence was the reluctance of small and medium-sized companies to give evidence in public. I can understand that, but it left a slight gap in the knowledge that we wanted to obtain, but I suppose that is water under bridge.

I turn now to the question of facilitation payments, referred to earlier in the debate. This does not have the spurious glamour, of course, of enormous companies doing bribery and corruption on a grand scale; nevertheless, they can have a very damaging effect on small companies seeking to open enterprises abroad. I had direct experience of this some years ago, when two friends of mine wanted to set up a very small enterprise in an Asian country. They kept meeting enormous obstacles, from their point of view. They never knew whether the rules they thought had obeyed would suddenly be changed and a little payment would be required. In the end, because they were so keen, they won through, but I am certain that many small enterprises would not continue to the end, and that is a great pity.

I had experience of this myself. To my astonishment, they needed the signature of a local official on some final piece of paper before they could set up in business. I was taken up six flights in great heat, where we were received by the said official, and when a large bottle of whiskey was handed over, the document was signed. Slightly later in the afternoon, when he said that he was going to take us out for lunch, we found that my friends were actually paying for lunch for this chap and his cronies. He actually had the gall to say, very proudly, that there was no corruption in his neck of the woods, so I suspect that this kind of thing is pretty pervasive and very difficult to deal with.

That is why I so applaud the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, I think—or one of our number—who spoke about the role of embassies in helping small and medium-sized companies with this kind of problem. It is not simply that the staff should have expertise, it is also important that they actually go out and talk to local officialdom to try to get them onside. It is clearly very difficult for one small company to get anything done, but if it can rely upon embassy staff to have much greater clout, this would be considerably helpful. I commend this and I want to know from the Minister how many people have this expertise in the various embassies, and how much work they are doing. That is extremely important.

Turning closer to home, I am also concerned that there are not sufficient people with real expertise and understanding of the very complicated nature of crime and corruption, which is so widespread even now. So, I was very disappointed when one of our recommendations, that the City of London Police’s Economic Crime Academy should be given additional resources, was rejected. We also recommended that every police force should have at least one senior officer with specialist training in dealing with bribery and corruption. I should be very interested to know whether this has come about and, if not, why not. It has unfortunately been, as has been said, some time since the report was published. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us what other actions the Government have taken since to deal with the particular problems that we raised, so that we can be assured that the Bribery Act, so excellent in itself, is fully implemented.