Small price to pay

Legislation, as politics, is the art of the possible. Put another way, unworkable statutes, whether for lack of will to comply or to enforce, bring the law into disrepute. The UK Bribery Act 2010 pushed the edge of feasibility from draft with its comprehensive scope, covering private-to-private dealings as well as payments to public officials. The Act introduced strict corporate liability for failure to prevent bribery, which extended to subsidiaries and third parties, while promising a defence if the organisation could evidence ‘adequate procedures’. But, like the word reasonable, adequate eludes precise definition; it waits on case law, of which there has been all but none – a court clerk, an aspiring self-employed cab driver and a student have been convicted of relatively small-scale activity.