The UK needs to restore its international reputation as a global leader in the fight against graft, after failing to improve on its poor showing in an international anti-corruption survey.
Campaigning organisation Transparency International has launched a call for the UK to improve its anti-corruption position, as its annual survey shows that the country has failed to make any improvement since last year, when it registered an all-time low score.
The organisation has launched an agenda for action in the UK, including measures directed at MPs, peers, ministers and public servants, and called on all the major political parties to make a commitment to fight corruption in the public and private sectors by adopting the agenda in their election manifestos.
Chandrashekhar Krishnan, executive director of Transparency International UK said the UK should aspire to be in the top 10 countries in the world, not struggling to make the top 20 and should demonstrate that its own house is in order before exhorting developing countries to improve their governance.
Transparency International's 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index, ranks 180 countries according to the perceived levels of corruption among public officials and politicians, scoring them on a scale of 0, most corrupt, to 10, least corrupt.
The least corrupt nations in the world are New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore and Sweden, according to this year's survey, while the most corrupt countries are those "scarred by war and ongoing conflict", including Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq.
The UK ranks 17th, one place lower than last year, with the same score, 7.7, as last year's all-time low. Before 2008, says Transparency International, the UK's corruption rating never fell below 8. It says there has been damage to the UK's international standing because of the MPs' expenses scandal and the weakness of UK efforts to prosecute foreign bribery.
The US ranks just below the UK, at 19th in the table, with a score of 7.5. Transparency International says industrialised countries cannot be complacent: "the supply of bribery and the facilitation of corruption often involve businesses based in their countries," says the report. "Financial secrecy jurisdictions, linked to many countries that top the index, severely undermine efforts to tackle corruption and recover stolen assets."
Transparency International wants more bilateral treaties, to fully end a regime of secrecy that enables corrupt money to find safe havens, according to Huguette Labelle, who chairs Transparency International.
"Corrupt money must not find safe haven. It is time to put an end to excuses," said Labelle. "The OECD's work in this area is welcome, but there must be more bilateral treaties on information exchange to fully end the secrecy regime. At the same time, companies must cease operating in renegade financial centres."
