Gifts and Hospitality Policy: What the Bribery Act Allows

A gifts and hospitality policy is the one compliance document where the law deliberately refuses to give you a number. The Bribery Act 2010 sets no threshold for a gift, a meal or a ticket, and the Ministry of Justice guidance that sits behind it asks a different question: was the expenditure reasonable and proportionate for that sector and that market. This is how to turn that into a policy an employee can actually follow.

Start with what the law actually says

Four offences matter. Section 1 covers offering or giving an advantage intending to induce or reward improper performance. Section 2 covers requesting or accepting one. Section 6 is a separate offence of bribing a foreign public official. Section 7 makes a commercial organisation liable when an associated person bribes on its behalf, with a defence of having adequate procedures in place.

Notice what is missing: any figure. The Act contains no value threshold for a gift or a meal, and the Ministry of Justice guidance published on 30 March 2011 does not supply one either. What it supplies instead is a direction of travel. Bona fide hospitality, promotional or other business expenditure that seeks to improve an organisation's image, better present its products or services, or establish cordial relations is recognised as an established and important part of doing business, and is not caught by the Act.

So the question a policy has to answer is not "how much" but "why". A ticket given to a customer three weeks before they run a tender is a different object from the identical ticket given to the same customer in a quiet month, and no threshold distinguishes them. Our plain-English guide to the Bribery Act covers the offences in full.

Why you still need a number

The absence of a legal threshold does not mean your policy should avoid one. The Ministry of Justice's own framing is proportionality: guidelines should be appropriate to the sector and markets you operate in, and clear enough that an employee can decide on their own what is acceptable, when approval is needed and what has to be recorded.

A threshold does three jobs that a principle alone cannot. It gives the employee a decision they can make in the moment without ringing anyone. It creates a trigger for a second pair of eyes on the items that carry risk. And it produces a record, which is the only thing that will be available if the question is asked two years later.

Set the number where your business will actually operate it. In a small consultancy that might be £50 for recording and £150 for approval. In a business that entertains at industry events it will be higher, and the important thing is that the higher figure is defensible by reference to what is ordinary in that market rather than to what is convenient.

What the policy needs to contain

Scope, stated broadly. Employees, contractors, agents, intermediaries, joint venture partners, anyone performing services for or on behalf of the organisation. Section 7 liability attaches through associated persons, so a policy that covers only payroll staff covers the wrong population.
Definitions that include the awkward cases. Gifts, meals, travel, accommodation, event tickets, training, conference places, use of facilities, discounts on personal purchases, charitable donations made at a customer's request, and anything given to a family member of a counterparty. Cash and cash equivalents, including vouchers and gift cards, should be prohibited outright rather than thresholded.
An absolute prohibition list. Cash, facilitation payments, anything offered or accepted during a live tender or contract negotiation, anything conditional on a decision, and anything the recipient asks to keep off the record. Add political donations, which should sit with the board rather than in this policy.
Thresholds and approvals. Bands with named approvers, not job families. Someone has to own each level.
A separate, higher bar for public officials. Section 6 has no improper performance requirement, which makes hospitality for officials a different risk class. Many organisations require pre-approval at any value.
The register. Both directions, given and received, with date, counterparty, value, business rationale and approver.
The refusal route. How to decline politely, and what to do when refusing would cause offence, which in some markets is a genuine problem. A common answer is to accept on behalf of the organisation, record it, and pass it to a charity raffle.
Consequences. That breach is a disciplinary matter, stated once and plainly.

The register is the control, not the policy

A gifts and hospitality register is the only part of this that produces evidence. It should be a single record covering both directions, reviewed periodically rather than filed, and audited for trends rather than for individual entries.

What a review is looking for is patterns, not values. The same supplier appearing repeatedly just under the approval threshold. A cluster of hospitality in the weeks before a contract award. One employee accounting for a disproportionate share of entries, or a business unit with none at all, which usually means under-reporting rather than restraint. None of those are visible in any single entry, which is the argument for reviewing the register as a dataset.

Keep the business rationale field mandatory and free-text. "Client relationship" tells you nothing. "Annual supplier day, three attendees, agenda attached" tells you everything, and it is written by the person who was there rather than reconstructed later.

The higher-risk cases

Live procurement. The simplest rule is a blanket prohibition on gifts and hospitality between the parties from the point a tender is announced until the award is published. It is easy to apply and easy to evidence. Our page on building an ethical procurement policy covers the wider controls.
Foreign public officials. Higher approval, more documentation, and a check on local law, which is sometimes stricter than yours.
Facilitation payments. Prohibited with no exception under UK law. Say so, and give people a safe route to report one that was demanded under duress.
Third parties and agents. The population most likely to create section 7 exposure and least likely to have read the policy. Due diligence at onboarding, a contractual clause, and a right to audit.
Charitable donations at a counterparty's request. A recognised route for disguised benefit. Route these through the same approval as a gift.

Where it sits in the compliance programme

A gifts and hospitality policy is one document inside the adequate procedures defence, not a substitute for it. The Ministry of Justice's six principles are proportionate procedures, top-level commitment, risk assessment, due diligence, communication and training, and monitoring and review. A policy discharges part of the first and, if you train on it, part of the fifth. The other four have to exist independently.

Practically, that means the policy should be referenced from the code of conduct rather than duplicated in it, trained on at induction and refreshed annually for higher-risk roles, and reviewed when the business enters a new market. Our guides to writing a code of conduct and building a compliance programme from scratch cover the surrounding structure, and the whistleblowing channel is where breaches surface when the register does not catch them.

One further point of context: the failure to prevent fraud offence under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act works on the same logic as section 7, with a reasonable procedures defence rather than an adequate procedures one. Organisations rebuilding their bribery controls should look at both together, which our page on the failure to prevent fraud offence sets out.

The primary source worth reading in full is the government's Bribery Act 2010 guidance. Everything else on ethics and governance is indexed at E-Business Ethics.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a legal limit on gifts and hospitality in the UK?

No. The Bribery Act 2010 sets no value threshold, and the Ministry of Justice guidance deliberately does not supply one. The test is whether the expenditure was reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances, judged against what is normal in that sector and that market. That is why any number in your policy is a control you have chosen, not a line the law has drawn.

Does the Bribery Act ban corporate hospitality?

No, and the government said so explicitly. The Ministry of Justice guidance states that bona fide hospitality, promotional or other business expenditure that seeks to improve an organisation's image, better present its products or services, or establish cordial relations is recognised as an established and important part of doing business, and is not prohibited by the Act. What is prohibited is hospitality intended to induce someone to perform a function improperly.

What value should trigger approval?

Whatever level your business can actually police. A common structure is a low de minimis below which items are simply recorded, a middle band needing line manager approval, and an upper band needing a director or the compliance function. The number matters far less than the discipline of applying it, and a threshold nobody enforces is worse than no threshold, because it evidences a control you were not operating.

Are gifts to foreign public officials treated differently?

Yes, and much more strictly. Section 6 of the Act creates a separate offence of bribing a foreign public official, and it does not require any element of improper performance: offering an advantage to influence the official in their capacity, intending to obtain business or an advantage, is enough. Hospitality for public officials should therefore sit in a separate, higher-approval category in the policy.

Are facilitation payments allowed if they are small?

No. Small payments to speed up a routine action by an official are bribes under UK law and there is no exception for them, unlike under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A policy should prohibit them by name, say what an employee should do if one is demanded, and give a route to report it after the fact where personal safety was at risk.

Does a policy on its own protect the company?

Not by itself. Section 7 makes a commercial organisation liable where an associated person bribes on its behalf, and the defence is having adequate procedures in place. The Ministry of Justice's six principles are proportionate procedures, top-level commitment, risk assessment, due diligence, communication including training, and monitoring and review. A policy is one of the six. A policy in a folder nobody has read is evidence of the opposite.