Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Passed in the dying moments of the last Parliament, in the fast-track, last-minute legislating known as the "washup", the Bribery Act was hailed as a world class anti-corruption law.

But it has yet to come into effect because ministers have been consulting on the "guidance" over what constitutes corruption and what constitutes acceptable conduct.

Now - to cheers from the CBI who are relieved that British business will not be swamped by an onerous compliance regime, and that corporate hospitality will not be criminalised. Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary says that in implementing the Act "the UK government and British business [are] striking a blow for the rule of law and the operation of free markets". So the Act will now come into force on 1 July.

But there are fewer hosannas from the watchdog group - who accuse the government of using the guidelines to overturn the intention of the legislation.

Part of the moral of this tale is that passing a law is quite often only the beginning of the legislative process - codes of conduct, official guidelines and regulations flesh out the skeletons provided by the laws passed by Parliament, but they seldom get anything like the same attention.

The trouble is that the devil is often in the detail and Transparency International UK's Executive Director Chandrashekhar Krishnan argues that the guidelines provide a series of loopholes which allow companies to get away with practices like bribing officials of foreign governments, which are supposed to be outlawed by the Act.

On the other side of the argument, there is considerable relief that the government is not going to impose burdensome regulations - but will provide a system that complies with the demands of major trading partners like the US and Germany which take an increasingly dim view of companies which engage in bribery.

The guidelines are not law, not even the kind of secondary legislation which passes through Parliament every day, so they don't have to be debated. I suspect they will attract plenty of comment in both houses of Parliament - but even the critics want the Act to come into force and won't want to provide any pretext for further delay.

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