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

Lord Morris of Aberavon Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House is to be congratulated on an impressive and comprehensive report, which is a good example of post-legislative scrutiny. I well remember that, when I was a member of a similar scrutiny committee on the Defamation Act, there was a steep learning curve.

In the short time available, I can touch on only some of the report’s subjects. The first is the role of the CPS and the SFO. In my time as a law officer, I had to initiate reform of the CPS by setting up the Glidewell inquiry. In my supervisory role, I had regular meetings with the Director of Public Prosecution and less frequent meetings with the director of the Serious Fraud Office. My first point is that, as a criminal law practitioner, I was very conscious of the immense burden that prosecutors carried in investigating and prosecuting fraud cases, which were becoming more complex than they had been in the past. It is essential that investigators and prosecutors have sufficient resources to tackle the problems. May I ask the Minister to place on record the financial resources that the CPS and SFO have been getting annually since the beginning of the period when austerity cuts began? I believe that the Ministry of Justice accepted far too readily reductions in finance and, hence, manpower. Specifically, can we have the figures for both?

I regard it as important that the Director of Public Prosecutions and the director of the SFO should publish plans outlining how they will speed up bribery investigations and improve levels of communications with those placed under arrest under the Bribery Act. That is not to denigrate the Government’s response, which I welcome; my query is whether it goes far enough. The committee received evidence of relatively low salaries for lawyers and investigators at the SFO and the CPS in comparison with their private sector counterparts. That is only partially taken on board in the Government’s endorsement of the SFO’s increased budget. I make the same point as regards the rank of police investigators and the resources that the police are able to devote. I regard the Government’s response to paragraph 85 of the report, where the committee makes a valuable recommendation, as inadequate. I submit that the Government should look again at this now and repeatedly in future years.

I welcome the scrutiny that the committee has given to deferred prosecutions and pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, for his advocacy. The emphasis is clear in the report that the judgment of the court should be public, and the public should be aware of what has happened and the conclusion.

On post-Brexit issues, the lower figures for applications for European arrest warrants at Westminster magistrates’ court in recent weeks are alarming. I am concerned by the Government’s claim that they have the available tools to ensure the safety of our realm and that we can get hold of people whom we require to face justice. I suspect that the tools are inadequate and we are less protected than we were. Perhaps we could have the observations of the Minister specifically on the issue of why there has been such a reduction in applications for extradition in recent weeks at Westminster magistrates’ court.

I welcome the committee’s scrutiny. I turn to that part of the report that deals with corporate hospitality, although it has been dealt with so adequately by the noble Lord, Lord Gold. The bottom line is that it is a matter of common sense, as he said—and I repeat that. Many years ago, my friend the late Sir Melvyn Rosser, one of the senior partners at Deloitte and a member of the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life, said that a possible yardstick of the measure of hospitality was that a bottle of whisky at Christmas might be permissible but certainly not a case of whisky at any time. The Bribery Act was never intended to prohibit reasonable and proportionate hospitality or other similar business expenditure. I do not go along with the committee’s attempt to get the Government to give clearer examples in the Ministry of Justice guidance. It is common sense at the beginning and the end, and no more advice is really needed.

With those brief words, I am conscious that I do not do justice to the committee’s hard work, which I commend, and I appreciate the forbearance of the House.