UK Bribery Bill: The long arm of the Crown

By Phil Taylor.

An imminent new law will add to the burdens faced by UK-registered companies operating in China and elsewhere abroad. The Bribery Bill is now at its final stage of debate in the House of Lords and will be debated in the Commons soon. It is expected to be passed around April or May 2010.

The current law in the UK consists mainly of the common law offence of bribery, which dates back to the early 13th century. This is supplemented by statutes including the Prevention of Corruption Acts, which were enacted in the early 1900s to amend and extend the law. The UK's law review body, the Law Commission, recently described the state of English law on this subject as “riddled with uncertainty and in need of rationalisation”. In October 2008, an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) working group strongly criticised the UK for failing to bring its anti-bribery laws in line with its international obligations under the Anti-Bribery Convention, despite ratifying that Convention 10 years previously.