Thread by @MetroUK

'To those who still say corruption doesn’t happen here, I say wake up, before it gets even worse.'

@CarolineLucas writes for @MetroOpinion

metro.co.uk/2021/10/06/pan…

When the issue of corruption is raised, most people in the UK would probably say things like that don’t really happen here.

After all, the UK is ‘the mother of parliaments’ and one of the world’s most established democracies. Our politics may be messy, but it is not corrupt.

This complacency is not only dangerous, it’s delusional.

It certainly should have been shattered by the revelations in the Pandora Papers, which give a glimpse into the world of tax dodging and money laundering by some of the world’s richest and most powerful people.

What happens to that wealth matters because much of it is infiltrating the UK, not only shaping the property market but influencing politics and democratic process. This is not just about buying expensive properties with ill-gotten gains, it’s about buying political access.

The corruption of UK property is bad enough. But what is more disturbing about the Pandora Papers is the corruption of our politics.

There are too many ways in which money of unknown origin can slip into the political system.

To contribute to a political party or individual politician, a donor of more than £500 need only be on the electoral roll and companies need only to be ‘carrying on business’ in the UK, with no proper checks on what that business might be.

As the Pandora Papers reveal, this has led to donations to the Conservative Party worth hundreds of thousands of pounds from individuals linked to corruption scandals overseas or to hostile governments, with the Tories appearing not to care where the money might have come from.

The prime minister’s response that all donations are ‘vetted in the normal way’ in accordance with the rules is not good enough because those rules are little more than a box-ticking exercise and he knows it.

We need much more robust controls on political donations because the current system creates the perception and, quite possibly, the reality that ministers and government policy can be influenced inappropriately by wealthy donors.

Or that donors can ‘buy’ their way into Parliament – the Financial Times last year calculated that 22 former Tory donors have been given a peerage in the last 13 years.

The PM’s attitude of ‘the system’s working well, nothing more to see’ is completely unacceptable. It has echoes of his response to the Russia Report, which revealed that the Kremlin had been interfering in our electoral processes going back to 2014 and continues to try to do so.

He has refused to order an inquiry into this interference, shelving the report and dismissing the legitimate concerns of politicians, diplomats and others as the moaning of ‘Islington Remainers’

So we are left facing an electoral system under attack from a foreign power, tainted with money from dubious sources and with what safeguards there are being deliberately weakened by the political party that is benefiting from it.