One Parliamentary Bill which did just complete its passage through Parliament without the wretched "wash up" process was the largely symbolic Bribery Act 2010

We criticised this Bill when it first appeared for its flawed attempt to correct the stupid Anti Terrorism Crime and Security Act 200 Part 12 Bribery and Corruption sections 108 to 110. , which made it a criminal offence for the intelligence agencies or for the military to ever bribe any foreign officials either for spy recruitment purposes or to help in the escape of military personnel trapped behind enemy lines etc.

Presumably the intelligence agencies and the military have simply been ignoring that stupid law ever since.

See: Bribery Bill 2009 clause 12 - some Secret Intelligence Service MI6 or Security Service MI5 exemptions, but why should Local Authority Trading Standards etc. ever be allowed to bribe anyone ?





13 Defence for certain bribery offences etc.

(1) It is a defence for a person charged with a relevant bribery offence to prove that the person's conduct was necessary for-- (a) the proper exercise of any function of an intelligence service, or

(b) the proper exercise of any function of the armed forces when engaged on active service.



(2) The head of each intelligence service must ensure that the service has in place arrangements designed to ensure that any conduct of a member of the service which would otherwise be a relevant bribery offence is necessary for a purpose falling within subsection (1)(a). (3) The Defence Council must ensure that the armed forces have in place arrangements designed to ensure that any conduct of-- (a) a member of the armed forces who is engaged on active service, or

(b) a civilian subject to service discipline when working in support of any person falling within paragraph (a), which would otherwise be a relevant bribery offence is necessary for a purpose falling within subsection (1)(b). (4) The arrangements which are in place by virtue of subsection (2) or (3) must be arrangements which the Secretary of State considers to be satisfactory. (5) For the purposes of this section, the circumstances in which a person's conduct is necessary for a purpose falling within subsection (1)(a) or (b) are to be treated as including any circumstances in which the person's conduct-- (a) would otherwise be an offence under section 2, and

(b) involves conduct by another person which, but for subsection (1)(a) or (b), would be an offence under section 1. (6) In this section--



"active service" means service in-- (a) an action or operation against an enemy,

(b) an operation outside the British Islands for the protection of life or property, or

(c) the military occupation of a foreign country or territory, "armed forces" means Her Majesty's forces (within the meaning of the Armed Forces Act 2006), "civilian subject to service discipline" and "enemy" have the same meaning as in the Act of 2006,



Even we noticed that the original text of the Bill did not specify the Armed Forces Act 2006

"GCHQ" has the meaning given by section 3(3) of the Intelligence Services Act 1994, "head" means-- (a) in relation to the Security Service, the Director General of the Security Service,

(b) in relation to the Secret Intelligence Service, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, and

(c) in relation to GCHQ, the Director of GCHQ,



"intelligence service" means the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service or GCHQ, "relevant bribery offence" means-- (a) an offence under section 1 which would not also be an offence under section 6,

(b) an offence under section 2,

(c) an offence committed by aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of an offence falling within paragraph (a) or (b),

(d) an offence of attempting or conspiring to commit, or of inciting the commission of, an offence falling within paragraph (a) or (b), or

(e) an offence under Part 2 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 (encouraging or assisting crime) in relation to an offence falling within paragraph (a) or (b).

Compared with the original text of the Bill when it was introduced, there is an improvement, with the removal of the huge attempted exemption

(a) the prevention, detection or investigation by, or on behalf of, a law enforcement agency of serious crime,

and

"law enforcement agency" means a public authority acting in pursuance of a duty of a public nature under the law of any part of the United Kingdom to prevent, detect or investigate crime,



which would have allowed the Serious Organised Crime Agency, any Police force, or HM Customs and Excise or the UK Border Agency or even Local Authority Trading Standards officials or even for private sector sub contractors working on behalf of Whitehall or Local Government departments investigating alleged fraud etc. to bribe officials in the UK or the rest of the world, without any scrutiny.

None of these public bodies should ever be allowed to bribe anyone, ever. To be fair to them, most of them would never wish to have such a power granted or imposed on them either.

Similarly GCHQ does not need the power to bribe people with impunity, but, for no good reason, this Act lumps them in with MI5 the Security Service and MI6 the Secret Intelligence Service, who may well do so.

Surely any conceivable scenario involving bribery of say, foreign Government telecommunications monopoly or company officials, which GCHQ might have an interest in, could be handled by MI6 the Secret Intelligence Service or by by Active Service Military personnel in the field ?

GCHQ should not have and should not seek to have, any of their personnel involved in the recruitment of Covert Human Intelligence Sources, the recruitment and proper handling of which must surely apply to any attempts to bribe foreign officials. This should be left to MI6 the Secret Intelligence Service or, in limited counter-intelligence operations, to MI5 the Security Service.

There is no independent scrutiny of the "arrangements" which the heads of the intelligence agencies or the Defence Council have to put in place according to the clause above.

There are no penalties for officials of those agencies or the armed forces, if they contravene such "arrangements".

Presumably these unspecified "arrangements" will involve some more bureaucratic form filling and blanket rubber stamp self authorisations, which will be kept secret from the public and Parliament, under the claim of "national security" exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act etc.

There is no mechanism for independent investigation of individual cases of alleged bribery involving people hiding behind "national security" secrecy.

There is not even any duty imposed on Ministers to report to Parliament and the public how much public money has been spent on bribes in total each year.

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