Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, what information his Department holds on the number of (a) attempted and (b) successful public prosecutions under Section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010, broken down by (i) type or sub-type of offence and (ii) prosecuting organisation or agency.

As Solicitor General I superintend the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The SFO is the lead agency in England and Wales for investigating and prosecuting serious international fraud, bribery, and corruption cases. The CPS also prosecutes bribery offences investigated by the police, committed either overseas or in England and Wales.

General bribery offences (sections 1 and 2 Bribery Act 2010)

The tables below show the number of individuals – British national or UK resident – charged and successful prosecuted (by way of guilty plea or conviction by jury) by the SFO under sections 1 and 2 of the Bribery Act 2010.

The CPS does not record or hold the requested data centrally and is not able to disaggregate its data based on nationality of offenders. The information can only be obtained by completing manual case file reviews, which would be at a disproportionate cost.

Section 7 Bribery Act 2010

The SFO has charged and successfully prosecuted (by way of Deferred Prosecution Agreement, guilty plea, or conviction by jury) 12 organisations under section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010.

The CPS has charged organisations under section 7 five times. However, this is not an indication of final outcome or if the charged offences were the substantive charges at finalisation. The CPS does not record or hold the requested data on prosecution outcomes at the offence-level centrally. The information can only be obtained by completing manual case file reviews, which would be at a disproportionate cost.

Section 45 Criminal Finances Act 2017

The SFO and CPS have not brought any charges under section 45 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017.