The Minister for Business and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
Today I am making a joint statement with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, who is responsible for modern slavery and organised crime. Together we wish to inform the House that the Government are publishing the UK’s first cross-government anti-corruption plan.
Corruption harms societies, undermines economic development and threatens democracy.
The UK is recognised as having strong institutions, and has led the way in implementing world-leading legislative standards through the Bribery Act 2010. But we recognise that more can be done to improve our co-ordination at home and better manage how we deal with bribery and corruption overseas.
As part of our second open government partnership national action plan, we committed to bring together all of the UK’s anti-corruption efforts under one cross-government plan. This plan will bring more co-ordination and coherence to our efforts and ensure that future activity to tackle corruption is joined up and collaborative.
The plan highlights that our priorities are: to build a better picture of how corruption is affecting our society and economy; strengthen our legal and operational tools and activity; enhance our law enforcement response; deny use of our financial system for those who are trying to abuse it; and step up our efforts internationally.
In my role as the Government anti-corruption champion I will jointly chair, with the Minister for modern slavery and organised crime, an inter-ministerial group to oversee delivery of the plan. We will work with colleagues across Government and civil society to drive forward work on this agenda.
A copy of the plan will be placed in the Library of the House. It will also be available on the Government website: www.gov.uk