Monty Raphael, special counsel to Peters & Peters and author of Blackstone’s Guide to the Bribery Act 2010, describes the government’s decision to delay implementation of the act as ‘puzzling’.

Business is nervous that outlawing lavish hospitality and promotional expenditure, and failing to legalise ‘facilitation payments’, will make British business uncompetitive and put executives at disproportionate risk of prosecution. If ministers can reassure business, and say whether or not failure to have adequate procedures to prevent bribery will carry with it the prospect of fatal exclusion from public works contracts, then Raphael believes the delay will be worthwhile.

The news is depressing regardless. It’s more than four years since criminal investigations into contested corruption allegations against BAE were abandoned following the intervention of the then attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith. The strictness of the act was seen as an indirect consequence of the BAE case and the damage it did to Britain’s international reputation. Yet still we wait for this branch of the law – last reformed more than a century ago – to be overhauled.

Meanwhile, the OECD, which backed the act, is making ominous noises, warning that British companies could face international blacklisting if the legislation is watered down.

The suspicion must be that the coalition is parking this issue in the ‘too difficult’ tray for now – partly to ensure immediate implementation does not act as a further drag on an economy set for a daunting 2011.