A policy and the register it feeds in one document, with three tiers for every gift and invitation: accept, declare or refuse. Written for the Bribery Act 2010 and the FCPA at once, with the thresholds left in brackets for you to set.
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Every gift and invitation lands in one of three rows: accept, declare or refuse. The values sit in brackets, with £25 and £75 as defaults (the hospitality bands in NHS England's guidance), so a manager can answer the question without calling compliance.
A policy that says record it in the register and never shows the register is half a document. Section 7 prints the columns, who keeps it, who reads it and how often.
Gifts templates usually pick one law. This one sets the UK test for hospitality beside the FCPA hallmarks of a proper gift, so one policy covers a UK company with US exposure, or the other way round.
This policy sets out when [Organization] and its people may give or accept gifts, hospitality and other benefits, and how each one is recorded. Its purpose is to make sure that nothing we give or receive could be seen as an attempt to influence a decision, and that the register can prove it.
The Ministry of Justice guidance on the Bribery Act 2010, published in March 2011, says that reasonable and proportionate hospitality is an established part of doing business and is not what the Act is aimed at.
It applies to every director, employee, worker and contractor of [Organization], and to anyone who acts for us: agents, distributors, consultants and joint venture partners. Under section 7 of the Bribery Act we can be liable for a bribe paid anywhere in the world by anyone performing services for us, if it was meant to win or keep business or an advantage for us.
Every gift, meal, ticket, trip or favor, given or received, must pass every test below.
A gift is anything of value received, with nothing paid in return, from a person or organization that does business with us, wants to, or is affected by our decisions. Promotional items of trivial value are not gifts. Everything else falls into one of the three tiers below. The values below are suggested defaults; replace them with your own. [NHS England's guidance on managing conflicts of interest sets lower figures for gifts: decline gifts from suppliers or contractors unless they are low-cost promotional items under £6, and accept gifts from other sources personally only under £50, counted cumulatively from one source over 12 months. NHS bodies and their suppliers should use those figures.]
Value a gift at what it would cost to buy. The tiers are cumulative: where gifts from one source in any 12-month period add up to more than [£75], treat the next one as over the limit. Cash and vouchers are declined whatever the amount, and the offer is recorded. A gift that cannot be refused without causing offense may be accepted for the organization, declared, and then [raffled for charity].
Hospitality is a meal, event, entertainment or travel paid for by someone else. It is acceptable where there is a clear business purpose, the host is present and the scale fits the occasion. The same three tiers apply, valued per head.
Travel and accommodation always need approval in advance, whatever the value. Tickets for use when the host is not present are a gift under section 3. Nothing may be accepted from an organization bidding for our business, or whose application we are deciding, while the process is open.
We give gifts and hospitality to build business relationships and for no other reason. Anything we give must meet the principles in section 2, be approved in advance by [your line manager, or the head of compliance above £75 per head], and be recorded in expenses with the recipients' names and the business reason. Never offer anything to a person deciding whether to award us business while the decision is open.
Public officials are different. Section 6 of the Bribery Act 2010 makes it an offence to give a foreign public official any advantage intending to influence them to obtain or retain business or a business advantage. No gift, hospitality, travel or donation of any value may be offered to a public official, in the UK or abroad, without written approval from [the head of compliance], recorded in the register. For this policy, treat as public officials: employees of state-owned companies, candidates for office and their close family.
[The FCPA has a similar rule for foreign officials, with an exception for facilitating payments that this policy does not adopt. Its Resource Guide of July 2020 notes that items of nominal value, such as cab fare, reasonable meals and company promotional items, are unlikely to improperly influence an official.]
Donations and sponsorship can disguise a bribe, so they follow this policy. Any donation or sponsorship in the organization's name must be approved by [the head of compliance], paid to an organization and never to an individual, recorded in the register with the reason, and never made at the request of a customer, official or partner in connection with a decision they are making.
The register is the evidence that this policy works. It records every declaration under sections 3 to 6, every refusal over the limit and every approval. [The compliance team] keeps it in [the compliance system]. [The head of compliance] reviews it [every quarter] for patterns: one supplier appearing repeatedly, one person declaring often, a cluster around a tender date. A summary goes to [the audit committee] [once a year]. The register is kept for [six years]. Each entry records the fields below.
Declare by [completing the gifts and hospitality form in the compliance system] within [10 working days] of the gift or event, or before it where approval is needed. Approval is given by [your line manager] up to [£75] and by [the head of compliance or a director] above it, in writing, before the item is accepted or given. If you are unsure, declare. An unneeded declaration costs a minute. A missing one can cost a job.
A breach of this policy is a disciplinary matter and may be gross misconduct. Anyone who sees a breach, or is offered something that feels wrong, should raise it with [the head of compliance] or through our whistleblowing policy. No one will suffer any detriment for raising a concern in good faith or for refusing a gift, even where that costs us business.
[The head of compliance] owns this policy and reviews it [every year], and sooner where the law changes, the register shows a pattern the policy does not cover, or an incident shows a gap. Last reviewed: [date]. Approved by: [the board] on [date].
A starting point to adapt to your organization, not legal advice.
The policy is read once. The register is read every quarter, by the people who will have to explain it. These six steps make the register the part that works.
Book a demoPick the values that fit your business and write the reason down. £25 and £75 match the hospitality bands in NHS England's guidance, whose gift limits are lower (£6 from suppliers, £50 from other sources); a bank or a defense contractor may go lower, a hospitality business may set a higher per-head figure for its own events. What matters is that the figures are deliberate, written and the same for everyone.
A form that asks for a cost code and a justification paragraph will not be filled in. Ask for the eight register fields and nothing more, on a phone, from the restaurant. The policy's 10 working days is the deadline; same day is the habit you want.
An approval that goes to your manager goes to no one in a matrix organization. Name the approver for each tier and for public officials, send every request to them from the form, and record the approval against the entry.
Sort it by giver and by recipient. Three meals from one supplier in a quarter, each under the limit, is the pattern the limit was never going to catch. A cluster of declarations in the month a contract came up for renewal is the other. Write down what you found and what you did.
A supplier who has bought lunch for the person approving their invoices has created an interest to declare. Cross-check the gifts register against conflict declarations and the supplier list, and ask about anything that appears in one and not the others.
The register is what you show a prosecutor, an auditor or an acquirer. Section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010 gives a company a defence if it had adequate procedures to prevent bribery; the register, with its reviews and its refusals, is the proof that the procedures ran. Keep it for [six years], with the review notes beside it.