Scandal: Just how corrupt is Britain?

Rotten banks, dodgy cops, MPs on the fiddle. A conference on public life has evidence to
topple long-held assumptions

Jonathan Brown
Friday, 10 May 2013

Looking across the seas at political scandals surrounding the likes of Silvio Berlusconi and
Jacques Chirac, at match-fixing in Pakistani cricket and Italian football, or claims of tax
avoidance on a nationwide scale in Greece, it was said jingoistically for many years that
humble Britain could never compete with the explosive corruption scandals that "Johnny
Foreigner" seemed to specialise in.

Yet recent British scandals can compete with the best Europe can offer. Besides MPs fiddling
their expenses and Jimmy Savile's history of paedophilia, racing has been hit by Frankie
Dettori's six-month drugs ban, we've seen London-based banks Barclays and UBS
embarrassed by the Libor rate-fixing scandal, and BAE Systems has been investigated over
its arms deals.

The police have become embroiled, too, with Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn jailed
for offering to sell information to the now defunct News of the World and evidence of a
cover-up on the Hillsborough disaster. And while none of our Prime Ministers have yet had to
stand before a court, MPs including Jonathan Aitken and Margaret Moran have been
convicted and Neil Hamilton famously lost his libel claim against Mohamed al Fayed over the
cash-for-questions affair.

Even royalty has not been immune, thanks to the tabloid sting that saw Sarah Ferguson
offering access to Prince Andrew for cash.

With this weighty list and other cases to examine, it will be claimed today that corruption
has in fact become an everyday part of British national life.

A conference of campaigners and academics, entitled "How Corrupt is Britain?", will hear
evidence that wrongdoing is not confined to a few corrupt officials but is systemic within
leading institutions.

The conference organiser, Dr David Whyte, of the University of Liverpool's School of Law and
Social Justice which is hosting the event, said the aim was to challenge two "long-outdated"
assumptions.

"First, that corruption is a problem that happens in far-away places, in governments that do
not have our traditions. Secondly, that corruption is something that we can understand
merely as a problem that stems from the actions of a minority of public officials who are 'on
the make', rather than something that is routine in our most venerated institutions," he said.
Among the speakers will be Carole Duggan who has campaigned on behalf of her late nephew
Mark Duggan who was shot by police in Tottenham, north London, in an incident that
sparked the summer riots of 2011.10/05/2013 Scandal: Just howcorrupt is Britain?

An Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report into his death is still not
complete and investigators have not spoken to the firearms officers involved. She claims she
has faced persistent collusion between official bodies preventing her bid to find out the truth
– with her lawyer, Michael Mansfield, arguing earlier this year that the cases showed the
IPCC was "not fit for purpose".

She believes that society as a whole has become more corrupt because of the anger at the
high salaries and bonuses still paid in the City despite its financial failings.

"Corruption is now endemic – just look at the bankers," she said. "They are teaching kids to
just take what they want – which is why they were taking trainers from shops in the riots.
That is what they are being taught by the greedy people."

Joanna Gilmore, of the Northern Police Monitoring Project – an organisation which brings
together campaign groups across the north of England – said many sections of the
population were losing faith in public bodies particularly the police and the IPPC.

Ms Gilmore said: "Corruption and violence is central to what people have experienced.
Communities feel powerless when they try to seek redress through official channels. They are
hitting a brick wall when they make a complaint."

Organisers hope that by sharing their experiences groups can pool expertise and find new
ways of dealing with systemic corruption across the whole of public life.

Co-organiser Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said there
was an urgent need to view corruption as a nationwide problem that spanned both public and
private spheres of national life.

He said: "In Britain it has often been thought that corruption is something that happens in
other countries, not ours. The conference will join the dots across the public and private
domains, and begin a dialogue between campaigns for police accountability, tax justice,
executive pay, political and corporate accountability.

"Rarely, if ever, do we talk about those things in the same place. This conference will make
links across those different spheres of public life."