Britain Needs An Independent Commission Against Corruption

The Baroness Mone saga is proving, yet again, that the British state is very poorly protected against those who (allegedly) require Ministers and/or officials to act unlawfully and/or in breach of their codes of conduct.

Unlike many other jurisdictions, Britain has no organised 'anti-corruption' programme, but only individual agencies that may focus partly on the public sector as part of their remit to address fraud and so on. The highest claim to an anti-corruption focus is a "collection" of "documents related to the government's work to combat domestic and international corruption"  and an "Anti-corruption Plan" from 2014, signed by none other than... [drum roll] Matt Hancock, whose subsequent activities are alleged to lie at the heart of a vast misallocation of public resources, not to mention the discharge of Covid patients into poorly equipped social care settings...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's own 'anti-corruption champion' managed to remain in post throughout numerous 'scandals' from 2017 until his abrupt resignation in June 2022, including that of the unlawful appointment of his own wife to public office by... Matt Hancock. What sparked this 'champion's' resignation was the fact that "Johnson’s independent adviser on ministerial interests, Lord Geidt, had said he felt unable to offer his opinion on whether Johnson had broken the [Ministerial] Code, because he might have felt compelled to resign if his advice were not followed." 

There's an offence of Misconduct in Public Office, but that seems so hedged around with discretion as to be deliberately subvertible.

Most significant unlawful government activity seems to be revealed through private lawsuits. And a skim through the many private actions initiated by the Good Law Project, for example, illustrates that HMS Britannia has a very leaky hull indeed. 

But that's the tip of the iceberg when you consider strong patterns of successful challenges to government decisions relating to the withdrawal of personal independence benefits, for example, and refusal of asylum applications. 

The UK even has a mechanism for civil servants to be absolved from legal responsibility so long as they receive a 'ministerial direction' to proceed - many of which have been issued in the May/Johnson era:

They have a duty to seek a ministerial direction if they think a spending proposal breaches any of the following criteria: 

• Regularity – if the proposal is beyond the department’s legal powers, or agreed spending budgets 
• Propriety – if it doesn’t meet ‘high standards of public conduct’, such as appropriate governance or parliamentary expectations 
• Value for money – if something else, or doing nothing, would be cheaper and better 
• Feasibility – if there is doubt about the proposal being ‘implemented accurately, sustainably or to the intended timetable’

While this results in the minister being responsible, there is little sign of actual ministerial accountability, especially where the government of the day holds a sizeable majority in Parliament and/or has significant links or sway with the media.

This lack of oversight and consequences for unlawful ministerial activity has meant that populist party policies and cronyism have overtaken the Rule of Law as the guiding principles for the British state. 

It's therefore time that Britain had its own 'Independent Commission Against Corruption', as was introduced in the state of New South Wales. It's no panacea, obviously, but it would more effective than anything the UK has now.