Prolonged vacancy – The UK government has gone an entire year without appointing the Anti-Corruption Champion, and it’s showing…

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After yet another week of Westminster being scarred by issues of political integrity, the British public is becoming acutely aware of issues around public sector corruption. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, The Hansard Society found that 6 in 10 people think our system of governing is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful. A post-pandemic study, conducted by UCL, found that trust in politics is in a low ebb and there is overwhelming public appetite for stronger mechanisms to uphold integrity among politicians.

Similarly, the Corruption Perceptions Index which ranks levels of perceptions of public sector corruption across the world, gives the UK its worst ever corruption ranking for 2022, dropping us seven places to 18th, falling at the same rate as Azerbaijan and Qatar. Calculated by numerous surveys measuring perception around things like the influence of political donors, the management of public money, and levels of bribery in the award of contracts, this is not a good look for the UK.

On a positive note, if our ranking gets any lower, FIFA might let us host the World Cup.

Unprecedented scandal

It doesn’t take anti-corruption experts to unravel the mystery as to why the UK has taken such a hit recently: it’s been an era of political scandal, quite unprecedented in its diversity and its relentlessness.

Remember, the Index is compiled using perceptions, and consistent breaking news stories have had a cumulative effect. Any political commentator worth their salt will often refer to their parents’ dinner table as the barometer of public opinion - informing them of what “cuts through beyond the Westminster bubble” and into people’s lives. The incessant waves of corruption scandals around Westminster and Whitehall have been rippling well beyond Politico’s morning gossip columns and into the public conscience.

MPs have been behaving badly, Ministers have been breaking the ministerial code, and there are growing concerns about the propriety of recent ‘resignation honours’ lists.

The public, of course, have their very own corruption perception index for the government – see the polling results for the last few years. 

Situation vacant

During last summer, government MPs declared no-confidence en masse for various reasons, one of them being ‘Partygate’, another being the Chris Pincher affair. Their number included John Penrose MP, who resigned a year ago last week as Anti-Corruption Champion (ACC). That vacancy has remained unfilled ever since – the longest time it’s been unoccupied since it was first created in 2006.

There are two ways to think about the impact of this continued Anti-Corruption Champion vacancy which may focus the mind: the short-term and the long-term.  

“A huge in-tray…”

As for the short-term - with a recently published Economic Crime Plan, an Anti-Corruption Strategy due this year, along with the expected passage of the Economic Crime Bill, and Procurement Bill - the incoming ACC already has a huge in-tray to sink their teeth into. Not to mention they can finally start progressing the 53 outstanding ethics recommendations from the 2021 Boardman and Committee on Standards in Public Life reviews that have been left on a shelf in the Cabinet Office, gathering more dust than the Ministerial Code. Since the vacancy, Transparency International found at least 20 corruption-related breaches of the parliamentary code (MPs and Lords), three ministerial resignations and one sacking.  

“The ‘dark arts’ of whipping have become blatant corruption…”

And for the long-term - I fear the continued testing of the public’s patience. The short-term-incentive-driven Parliamentary system offers little time for wider reflection on the erosion of public trust via the rolling breaking news scandals chipping away public patience.  

The mismanaged allocation of the “levelling up” Towns Fund has a real impact on people’s lives, which the Public Accounts Committee found to have “every appearance of being politically motivated.” Similarly, to secure someone’s wavering parliamentary vote, the then-Health Secretary’s WhatsApp messages revealed he discussed withholding funds for a learning disability hub in Manchester. The ‘dark arts’ of whipping have become blatant corruption – it is now fair game to use public resource as bait. 

A flawed system

The British political system of self-regulation, the historical conventions, the ‘good chaps’ theory, have all been made a mockery of. My piece isn’t a direct advocation for a more codified system, but the guidelines and the guardrails of integrity in public life are only as strong as they are respected – which isn’t much right now. 

Incapable of self-regulation, our political institutions are increasingly content to allow corruption risk to creep up the other key pillars of British society that rely on our consent – consent which is grounded in trusting their impartiality and integrity. The BBC and its former Chairman found themselves embroiled in a conflict-of-interest case following an £800,000 loan to the then-PM; the Royal Family are under pressure following their appropriation of various “state gifts” worth over £100million, raising questions about official gifts being taken as private property; and the historic social fabric of football is increasingly under strain due to the state-funded monopoly clubs riddled with financial irregularities and dishonesty.

The potentially frightening future

More serious still, public disenchantment with institutions can lead down a frightening road. Polling this week found that a quarter of the UK believes that Covid was a hoax, whilst a third believe that the cost-of-living crisis is a government plot to control the public. Fighting the fake news era will be more difficult if our institutions are subject to regular corruption scandals.

To be clear: the appointment of a new ACC would not be a silver bullet and public trust in our institutions will not be rebuilt overnight. But how low in the Corruption Perception Index does the UK need to fall for the government to appoint an ACC? Can we afford to keep dropping year-on-year? 

In other words, what will be our wake-up call? What will be our boiling point? What will be the corruption scandal to end all corruption scandals? 

As Westminster seeks to out-do itself for this accolade, the Anti-Corruption Champion’s desk is becoming more of a museum piece rather than the beating heart of a government eager to be defined by integrity.