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Africa: Corruption

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, has done a service to the governance of the UK as well as to many African states in calling attention to this excellent report. I declare an interest as a member of the Executive of the Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group, and of the Advisory Council of Transparency International (UK), the anti-corruption charity. The report distinguishes between grand corruption and petty corruption, which states themselves have to grapple with. They are increasingly doing so, as the noble Lord, Lord St. John, said: such as the state-funded Nigerian Government’s Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, bravely rooting out fake, often death-dealing, corruptly purchased medicines; and the new Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s code for the civil service, aimed, with legal penalties, at rooting out the corruption which she described two weeks ago in London as ““pervasive throughout”” her society. We can support this with measures such as the Private Member’s Bill on reporting and transparency, which I hope to introduce shortly. Grand corruption, of the sort that loots national infrastructure budgets and puts the revenues of national assets into the pockets of powerful individuals, is not a matter of the internal culture of the suffering country alone. Bribery on this scale needs an, invariably foreign, investor/contractor, as well as a local recipient. John Githongo, the distinguished Kenyan former Permanent Secretary of their anti-corruption department, in a very interesting speech on 8 June, described the nourishing of this corrosive evil as,"““embedded corruption networks engineered mainly during the Cold War””—" when—"““the West supported some of the most corrupt and oppressive regimes on the continent””." It was to deal with this that the main international rules were developed. The UK has signed up to most of them and it has moved positively, after complaints, to improve the Export Credit Guarantee Department’s anti-bribery and corruption procedures last March. But there is not a clear message at all about what our anti-corruption legislation consists of. The law is piecemeal and unsatisfactory; the Government’s previous attempt to draft a Bill—the scrutiny committee which I was privileged to sit on—was, sadly, confusing and missed the point about overseas corruption. I hope the current consultative process will take account of all the points raised. Very many responsible companies know how to keep their house in order ethically. Those of us who read the interesting debate last week about London as a financial centre might have been struck by how crucial the culture of trust and shared values was to the original development of the City and how important it is now, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, emphasised. I do hope that the Government will accept the report’s proposed amendment to the Company Law Reform Bill, which all our honourable friends are minded to move to close a significant loophole against money-laundering. But even more, I hope they will take the heaven-sent opportunity of a draft Bill—which business can understand and operate, and which is stimulated by the scrutiny committee’s report—and which the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, is fortunately to take forward. For while the Government delay, millions suffer and many die, because of corrupt acts carried out by rich companies with impunity, including British ones. Our part of the bargain with the developing states, whose better governance we solicit, must be to reduce substantially corrupt behaviour by UK companies.