Bribery Bill

Law Reform

The United Kingdom has been under pressure to reform the law on bribery and corruption since ratifying the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transaction in December 1998. This followed a year on from the UK officially signing up to the OECD Convention. When the UK ratified the convention it concluded that existing law was sufficient to implement the convention, yet a year on an OECD Working Group on Bribery found the UK lacking.

Reports indicate that a draft Bribery Bill is due to be published for pre-legislative scrutiny in the 2009 session. This bill follows the publication of the Law Commission's Reforming Bribery Report. According to the Law Commission their recommendations "will remove the outmoded distinctions between the public and private sectors. For the first time, there will be a single set of provisions capable of dealing with both sectors."

Attempts

In 1998 the Law Commission published a report and draft Bill on Corruption under LC248.

This led to the Government draft Corruption Bill 2003. Under pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee the Corruption Bill received heavy criticism and it was recommended that the scheme of offences proposed be restructured.

The Government then went on to produce a consultation paper in December 2005. This revealed broad support for reform but lacked any consensus for progress to achieve it.

The Law Commission published another consultation paper in November 2007 under paper No. 185. This led to the Law Commission Final Report of November 2008 under LawCom No313 or the Reforming Bribery Report.