Our Letter to the new PM: Appoint the Anti-Corruption Champion

RE: The appointment of the Anti-Corruption Champion

Dear Prime Minister,

Our Coalition would like to welcome you to your new role. We are writing as anti-corruption experts and civil society organisations to urge you to prioritise the appointment of an Anti-Corruption Champion at the earliest opportunity. By convention, the post is a Prime Ministerial appointment.

The champion post, which was created by the last Labour government in 2006, has now been vacant since 2022 when John Penrose resigned in protest at former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lock-down rules breaking. Under the Coalition and Conservative governments elected in 2010 and 2015, a champion was reappointed within one month of entering government.

The post is crucial for delivering oversight and coordination of a cross-government anti-corruption strategy - which the UK has also been without since 2022.

A new ambitious Anti-Corruption Strategy which provides cross-government coordination and collaboration is critical to delivering several of the new government’s manifesto commitments including:

• working with allies and international financial centres to tackle corruption and money-laundering,

• cleaning up standards in public life,

• strengthening rules around political donations,

• ensuring accountability and value for money in local government,

• strengthening powers to tackle misconduct in the police, and

• safeguarding public spending and procurement from fraud, waste and cronyism.

The new Champion should be independent and influential, with a strong background in anti-corruption and illicit finance policy, have the ability to convene ministers and access government information, and be given the space and power to genuinely influence government policy and hold it accountable for delivery.

The appointment of this post would send a much-needed signal that the UK under a new government intends to step up to a leadership role in tackling corruption globally and at home.

We are keen to support you to deliver this agenda and would be delighted to discuss the issues outlined in this letter with your office.

Sincerely,

Rachel Davies Teka
Co-Chair of the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition / Advocacy Director, Transparency International UK

Thom Townsend
Co-Chair of the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition / Executive Director, Open Ownership