Is Britain becoming more corrupt?

Published: Wed 01 February 2023
Updated: Thu 02 February 2023
By steve

In Markets.

2023-02-01

Corruption in the UK

UK records lowest-ever score in Corruption Perceptions Index. This is perhaps unsurprising. The raw stats are pretty depressing:

  • £100 billion of dirty money passes through UK systems and services every year.[i]

  • 87,000 land titles in England and Wales are owned by opaque corporate structures that hide the true owners.[ii]

  • 76% think wealthy individuals often use their influence on Government for their own interests.[iii]

  • Just 52 people made a sixth of all declared UK political donations between 2001 and 2016.[iv]

  • £1.27 billion is lost annually to fraud, bribery and corruption in the NHS.[v]

It is possible to view corruption as a problem that can be solved using the tools of economics. Policy makers, civil servants and firms which supply goods and services to the public sector are all subject to laws of supply and demand. A civil servant can maximize his utility by accepting bribes to boost his salary in exchange for recommending a supplier who is, perhaps, slightly less competitive than one which chooses not to pay a bribe.

The rational economist in me wants to dismiss sociological and cultural explanations of increased corruption, but maybe that’s just … irrational. We have become a more fragmented society, as religion has been replaced by social media and Netflix. We live in increasingly income-segregated communities. Leafy suburbs become unaffordable for public sector workers, as the catchment areas of outstanding schools shrink and the house prices in them escalate beyond reach. Private schools, once affordable to bank managers and local solicitors become the preserve of rich Chinese parents.

We no longer have a shared experience of consumption of news. The popular press and media now are everywhere, the free, ad-supported low-brow material is driving out the higher quality material which has to be behind a paywall in order to pay the journalists who produce it. Every fortnight Private Eye runs story after story of petty corruption in Westminster, the City and local authorities around the country, but only boring old farts like me who are willing to pay to read it are exposed to its scoops. The masses consume endless non-stories about Kim Kardashian, Katie Price and assorted other vacuous celebrities. Cynics will say that it was ever thus, but even in households which took the Daily Mirror and the News of the World the BBC’s serious news programmes on Radio 4 were listened to.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/02/01/the-worlds-most-and-least-democratic-countries-in-2022?utm_content=article-link-3&etear=nl_today_3&utm_campaign=a.the-economist-today&utm_medium=email.internal-newsletter.np&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2/1/2023&utm_id=1471067

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