What looks like becoming Europe’s largest corruption probe is gathering pace. Five countries are now involved in the investigation into alleged corruption at Siemens, the German engineering company, and the US Department of Justice has launched its own inquiry.

But Britain’s enforcement record, in sharp contrast, remains poor. Already reeling from the decision to halt the BAE Systems al-Yamamah investigation, it recently suffered another setback when the Government was forced to withdraw its Corruption Bill in a state of disarray.

Remarkably, the Government has also refused to support an alternative and far more workable Corruption Bill proposed by the leading international antibribery body, Transparency International (TI). Instead, it has asked the Law Commission to propose alternative legislation, with the effect that any new law is unlikely to be in force until 2009 at the earliest.

The UK’s anticorruption legislation, which has remained largely unchanged since 1916, was essentially formulated to deal with the then principal evil, corruption in public office. But the pace and international nature of commerce has changed dramatically and it is universally accepted that new legislation to tackle modern-day corruption is needed.

The only new legislation since early last century is buried deep within the provisions of the AntiTerrorism Crime and Security Act 2001. While this gave courts here jurisdiction to try UK nationals for corrupt acts committed overseas, the reality is that this power had to be brought in to render the UK compliant with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Convention on Bribery, which the Government ratified in 1998.

A prosecution is still to be brought under the Act, which underscores the fact that the 2001 Act was driven by external requirements rather than domestic policy.

The OECD Convention also reiterated the need for more coherent anticorruption legislation generally, and so in 1998 the Law Commission recommended replacing three historic statutes with a single modern Corruption Act. It is from here that the Government appears to have lost its way.

A White Paper was not produced until 2000, but with proposals that did not properly reflect the Commission’s recommendations. Despite criticism, and further delay, the draft Bill published in 2003 largely adhered to the White Paper.

Unsurprisingly, it was severely criticised again at the parliamentary committee stage. This prompted the Government to hold a further consultation in December 2005 that closed in March last year. The results of that consultation were, however, not published and the Bill was quietly shelved in March.

The Bill was cumbersome and unnecessarily complicated. But in its foreword, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, then Lord Chancellor, indicated that it was part of a multifaceted strategy to tackle corruption both at home and internationally, and was critical to protect UK interests.

So it is all the more surprising that having failed with its own legislation, the Government should refuse to adopt the TI Bill, which appears to be comprehensive and clearly drafted.

The Bill was blocked by the Government when it was introduced in the House of Commons in May last year by Hugh Bayley, Labour MP for the City of York. Undeterred, TI prepared an updated Bill put forward in the House of Lords as a Private Member’s Bill by Lord Chidgey last November. Despite having a third reading in June, there is no indication that the Government will change its position.

The TI Bill, which carries a maximum seven-year sentence, covers general corruption, corruption involving agents, bribery of foreign officials, foreign bid rigging and corruption in sport. It also contains a duty on public servants to report corrupt activity, and a duty on UK companies to ensure that foreign subsidiaries and parties that they contract with overseas comply with the Act once passed.

Rather than requiring an offender to act corruptly, a term that the Government’s Bill had difficulty defining, it provides that a person needs only to act improperly, defined as being in breach of any duty, to commit an offence. As such it is more widereaching than the Government’s Bill and, in that it is significantly less complicated, also likely to be easier to enforce.

Many now argue persuasively that the perception of political interference in the al-Yamamah decision has greatly compromised the Government’s position on corruption.

The full ramifications of that decision remain to be seen, but in the interim the failure to bring in new legislation – even though a respected independent body has provided credible way forward – does the Government little credit.

The writer is a partner in the fraud and regulatory investigations department at Russell Jones & Walker and author of the chapter on corruption in Fraud: Criminal Law and Procedure to be published by Oxford University Press early next year.

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