[iso1631]

Most common bribes I see is when I go to some countries and I am expected to pay an undisclosed fee to get better service. My anti-bribery training mentioned how these are often quite normal, and dressed up in terms like "facilitation fee", or "tip", but that if I were to pay such a fee I'd be breaking UK law.

[galangalalgol]

Interesting! So you can't tip restaurant servers legally? Most point of sale machines for restaurants ask you to select a tip from a list of several standard optiins that usually puts 20% in the middle to make it seem normal, and like 15% is reserved as a mild complaint. So its not exactly undiaclosed, you can guess pretty well what it will be.

[iso1631]

The UK act says I (P) committe an offence if

(a)P offers, promises or gives a financial or other advantage to another person, and (b)P intends the advantage— (i)to induce a person to perform improperly a relevant function or activity, or (ii)to reward a person for the improper performance of such a function or activity.

The definition of improper broadly boils down to

> the test of what is expected is a test of what a reasonable person in the United Kingdom would expect in relation to the performance of the type of function or activity concerned.

Tipping at starbucks, or tipping a barman, or tipping a hotel member holding open a door, is certainly not what a reasonable person in the United Kingdom would expect.

"Tipping" is quite normal in the US. "Tipping" is quite normal in many African countries too. If you don't tip, you'll struggle to get any service (when you're running a project or whatever). It's a whole can of worms when normal activities in a country require a small payment.

Note also that if I tell my local project manager to make it happen, I'm on the hook for it if he "bribes" someone just as much as if I did it myself.

I'm sure the intent of the law is to prevent UK citizens from paying money to bypass bureaucracy (I had a very painful process importing some equipment at an airport once, they did not want to give me a receipt for the $1500 I wanted (and was supposed to) pay, they just wanted $50 to waive me through, or to stop me from paying an official $200k to let me build a pipe through a village, or whatever.

However it also means it's harder to make their project run smoothly in Guatemala ("Oh yes you can unload your lorry of course, this paperwork seems fine, but unfortunatly I need to check with my manager and he's currently out of town for 3 days. cough."), and means that you'll be subjected to a lengthy search at an airport (just long enough to miss your flight) for no reason unless you donate to their orphan fund or whatever.

I struggle to see the difference between that (which wouldn't be the case in the UK) and tipping a postman (which again I've never seen in the UK). The former I assume is illegal, the latter not, but it's not clear.

By enshrining English exceptionalism in UK law does seems rather off to me -- basically "treat all countries as if they were Britain, salute the Queen, and up the East India Company"

[galangalalgol]

Does it matter that the tip is given after the service insteaf of before? My kids yoga teacher has a "pay what you can or what it is worth to you" scale so disadvantaged kids can come. I think of tips kind of like that.

[iso1631]

No, it's both again induce (i.e before) and reward (i.e. after)

It comes down to the definition of "improper".