Anti-corruption Awareness (Hansard, 14 December 2000)

§ Mr. Caborn

[holding answer 13 December 2000]: Since the UK's ratification of the OECD Bribery Convention in 1998, focusing on the bribery of foreign public officials to obtain or retain business, my Department has been determined to ensure that UK companies understand their rights and responsibilities, and recognise that this Government are not prepared to continue to treat corruption as a necessary part of doing business.

Details of the Convention itself can be found on the DTI's website www.dti.gov.uk/worldtrade/bribery.htm. The Convention will also feature in a DTI publication on "OECD's Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises" (which the Government have endorsed) due to be published in the new year. DTI has consulted business and the private sector themselves are keen to adopt a more ethical business policy including a strong anti-corruption message, which we strongly encourage.

Overseas, officials engaged in promoting the specific interests to British companies will always give frank advice on the commercial and legal and regulatory frameworks obtaining in those markets. But we are looking to produce more explicit advice to exporters, working in partnership with the Department for International Development.

The Export Credit Guarantee Department has also taken steps to reduce corruption by ensuring that applicants for ECGD cover should be asked in future to warrant to ECGD that an export contract has not been secured by corrupt means and divulge whether they have ever been convicted of corruption. ECGD will have the right to deny any insurance cover that it might have given, and recover any loss following the date of conviction.

Of course corruption is part of a much bigger agenda on Corporate Social Responsibility to which the Government are committed. Last March, my hon. Friend the Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs was appointed Minister for Corporate Social Responsibility; this was the first such appointment in any Government in the world and will reinforce private sector efforts to defined responsible business conduct.