Today’s announcement that the Home Office and City of London Police have established a new pilot Domestic Corruption Unit is an incredibly important and welcome tipping point.
According to the government, the new unit will seek to:
- enhance intelligence development capabilities and provide useful insights on the corruption landscape and threat;
- lead proactive investigations – increasing capacity where there was none before; and
- coordinate some of the highly fragmented anti-corruption landscape to “work in unison to bring corrupt individuals to justice.”
This couldn’t be more important. For over a decade, the National Crime Agency has highlighted in its threat assessments the need for “a more cohesive and consistent intelligence picture from the public and private sector” on corruption. In 2020, it found that the UK lacked “an accurate picture of the scale and nature of domestic bribery and corruption.”
In 2023, meanwhile, the National Audit Office concluded that the government “does not have a good understanding of the extent of corruption” in the public sector.
The Security Minister today announced that by some estimates 130,000 bribes were offered between 2017-2020 in seven different sectors, with 169 corruption offences recorded by the Police in England and Wales in 2023-2024. This is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.
From major corruption risks in the Border Force and the police to the importance of holding those in public office at all levels to account, this unit is likely to have plenty on its plate.
To ensure that this initiative is successful we urge the new government to:
- Ensure long-term five-year sustainable funding to enable this unit to succeed.
- Look at bringing forward a new corruption in public office offence at the earliest opportunity to replace the outdated Misconduct in Public Office offence.
- Ensure that all government departments, local authorities and police forces are required to monitor and report on corruption risks on an annual basis.
- Look at establishing a suitable national level corruption reporting mechanism.
For too long the UK has taken a ‘don’t look, don’t see’ approach to corruption in the UK itself. The government’s announcement today of its new Domestic Corruption Unit is an incredibly important and welcome tipping point. It will certainly have its work cut out.
The government should also ensure that as part of its new Anti-Corruption Strategy it develops a broader set of measures to tackle domestic corruption which include introducing a new corruption in public office offence at the earliest opportunity.
