Margaret Hodge, a long-term campaigner against global corruption, has been appointed as the UK’s anti-corruption champion.
Her strong track record of campaigning on the issue, including in the UK overseas territories, is a signal of intent by the foreign secretary, David Lammy, that he intends the issue to be at heart of his revamped Foreign Office.
He feels the Conservative government foolishly dropped the issue after David Cameron, an unexpected trailblazer in the area, was forced to resign as prime minister in 2016. Lammy believes tackling corruption has resonance with the British public and in the global south.
Before she became a peer earlier this year, Lady Hodge used her position as MP and chair of the public accounts committee from 2010 to 2015 and then on the all-party group on anti-corruption and responsible tax to demand the government do more to act against dirty money in London, including the enablers that hide laundered money.
She also led the charge to change the law to force the British overseas territories to open their books by issuing publicly available registers of beneficial ownership, a way of highlighting money laundering and tax evasion.
At a meeting in London in November, some overseas territories continued to resist public registers, citing European court of justice rulings to claim privacy must be maintained. Deadlines for registers to be made public, including one set for December 2023, have been repeatedly missed, with ministers so far taking no action.
In a joint article written with the former Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell, published in the Guardian in November, Hodge wrote: “We know all too well that the overseas territories and crown dependencies play a pivotal role in helping crooks and tax dodgers launder and hide their dirty money.
“Dirty money underpins corruption, crime and conflict. It causes immense harm at home and abroad, enabling serious and organised crime and diverting resources needed for vital public services.
“Public registers, and the scrutiny that they bring, are the best antidote to the scourge of illicit finance.”
The Foreign Office said she “will work with parliament, the private sector and civil society to help drive delivery of the government’s priorities to clamp down on corruption and the organised criminals who benefit from it, helping to deliver safer streets and secure borders”.
During a joint visit to the National Crime Agency with Hodge, Lammy announced the Foreign Office would extend its funding support to the NCA’s International Corruption Unit (ICU) by up to £36m over five years. There have been frequent complaints that the ICU has been under-resourced. It has already frozen over £441m of assets related to international corruption since 2020.
Lammy said: “Corruption poses a real threat to the UK. It enables the activities of dictators, smugglers and organised criminals around the world, making our streets less safe and our borders less secure.
“Take Syria, where Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power this weekend after decades of brutal suppression, financed in recent years by laundering the proceeds from the illegal Captagon trade abroad.
“This government will make the UK a hostile environment for the corrupt and their ill-gotten gains as we put national security as a foundation of our plan for change and decade of national renewal.”
Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking from 1994 to 2024 and still politically active in the Lords at 80, said she felt “privileged and delighted to be able to work as the government’s champion, combating corruption and the illicit finance that flows from it, both at home and abroad”.
“The time has now come to put an end to dither and delay. We must take determined and effective action and I look forward to playing my part in that work,” she added.
The UK has also imposed further sanctions to tackle dirty money, this time targeting the illicit gold trade. Illicit gold is an assault on the legitimate trade of a valuable commodity, fuelling corruption, undermining the rule of law and entrenching human rights abuses such as child labour. Russia uses the illicit gold trade to launder money and evade sanctions, in doing so bolstering Putin’s war efforts.
