Corruption: Low and Middle-income Countries

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

As the noble Lord will appreciate, we speak to our friends in the United States about a range of issues all the time, and illicit finance is certainly one of those issues.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, in inviting the Minister to comment on the matter I am about to raise, I draw attention to my practice at the Bar, which involves some corruption cases overseas. One short suggestion that I make to her is that we could increase the failure to prevent regime under criminal law. We already have failure to prevent bribery, tax evasion and fraud offences, but it would be the work of a moment to increase the ambit of that to cover other forms of bribery, corruption, money laundering and so on. Could she discuss that with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I understand that the noble Lord has a great deal of experience in these issues. I am very happy to take that suggestion back to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to discuss it with friends and colleagues at the Home Office, because this is an ever-changing situation and we need to use every tool at our disposal in order to combat this illegal activity.