Insider threat

The commitment on the insider threat refers to commitments from 1.1 to 1.11 of the UK Anti-Corruption Strategy but also relates to commitments on local government scattered throughout the strategy (such as 3.1; 3.5; 3.6; 4.1; 4.11 mainly focused on fraud and procurement). It is specifically divided into prisons, police, defence, borders and local government.

Prisons: in December 2018, the HM Prison and Probation Service¹ (HMPPS) developed an internal anti-corruption strategy for prisons and probation, which secured full funding as part of the recently announced £100m investment in prison security. According to the strategy update, this investment will support the agency’s efforts to tackle the insider threat by increasing their capability to protect staff from being drawn into corruption. The strategy will also support a review of recruitment and vetting procedures so that these processes are not exploited by criminals. The final processes of vetting and inducting staff should be completed by the end of March 2021. As a direct result of this recruitment HMPPS are now in a position to design and pilot the ‘Prevent’ offer as part of the 4 ‘P’ Strategy.²

In addition, HMPPS launched a counter corruption unit in April, alongside a communications campaign to encourage prisons and probation staff to report suspected corruption and wrongdoing. New memorandums of understanding to improve collaboration and intelligence sharing have also been agreed between the HMPPS and the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the National Crime Agency. Much of the detail regarding the above is unpublished, so it is hard to verify the information that was provided as part of the UK Anti-Corruption Strategy updates for years 1 and 2.

Police: 43 police units have been assessed since the launch of the Anti-Corruption Strategy in 2017. Yet a year-by-year breakdown is not available, so it is unclear which assessments have been carried out when. The Strategy’s year 2 update states that “initial findings have focused on the capacity of counter-corruption units, backlogs in ensuring baseline vetting for all staff and the patchy quality of forces’ strategic threat assessments of corruption”.³ Two-thirds of all the police stations have been assessed, and the last batch will be assessed in 2020. The annual, all-force inspections (PEEL assessments) are online.⁴

In the Anti-Corruption Strategy year 2 update, the government notes that “due to pressures on parliamentary time, it was not possible in 2019 to implement relevant provisions of the Policing and Crime Act 2017. This has meant a delay in implementing a number of strategy commitments on policing”.⁴ However, the relevant regulations were laid before in Parliament in early 2020,^{5 6} and so these commitments have now been implemented. They will be reported on in detail in the year 3 update of the UK Anti-Corruption Strategy.

Defence: for the defence sector, the government reports in the UK National Anti-Corruption Strategy Year 2 update that:

The government has revised the terms and conditions of the Strategic Crime Intelligence Forum to increase collaboration between the Ministry of Defence Police and partner agencies, national law enforcement and other policy partners. The forum meets bi-monthly to exchange, and apply, intelligence reporting and lessons learned. The government has also developed a short awareness film, which explains why some defence material is attractive to criminals and terrorist groups and the key roles individuals can take in denying them access to such materials. The government has also established regular checks and audits to ensure that such material is properly accounted for and discrepancies are investigated by a dedicated independent team. The government has increased the effectiveness and efficiency of insider threat investigations within MOD by providing the team focused on detecting insider threats better access to data and analysis.³

There is not much information online about the Strategic Crime Intelligence Forum or the film that was produced. The data may not be available to the public for security reasons, yet this prevents us from assessing whether the actions taken by the government have actually improved the understanding of the insider threat in the defence sector.

Borders: the government reports that:

They have been increasing their focus on the ports through better training of personnel, and better use of technology for detecting threat and information sharing.⁷ They are also piloting initiatives to deny, detect and deter hostile or criminal insider activity at a variety ports.

There is not much information online about the training provided to personnel at the UK ports. The data is not be available to the public for security reasons, yet this prevents us from assessing whether the actions taken by the government have actually improved the understanding of the insider threat in the borders sector.

The UK is also a signatory to the World Customs Organization (WCO)⁸ Arusha Declaration on governance and integrity⁹ and provides updates to the WCO on progress against the Arusha Declaration measures. The UK government has informed TI-UK that they provide updates, although we have been unable to independently verify this using public information.

Local government: in the summer of 2019, the government completed a review into the risks of fraud and corruption in local government procurement. Over 80 councils were represented at seven workshops, and 145 responses were received, as well as over 25 case studies and a number of examples of best practice in the local government sector. Relevant departments are discussing the review’s findings, and the results were published in June 2020.¹⁰

Overall, there is evidence that the government is making progress in this commitment; however, in the absence of more detailed information about its work to date on prisons, policing, borders and defence, we cannot conclude it is fulfilled.

Challenges to effective commitment implementation
Borders, police and prisons – given the lack of transparency surrounding the implementation of these parts of the commitment, it is difficult to assess any challenges faced.

Local government – local authorities in England are now solely responsible for the conduct and standards of their councillors, and their standards committees are no longer supported by a national regulator. While the Localism Act 2011 still requires English local authorities to produce codes of conduct and provides minimum standards regarding the declaration and management of financial interests, the absence of a standardised and nationwide approach has led to a wide variety of practice. The Local Government Association (LGA) and its Planning Advisory Service (PAS) have produced guidance to advise councils on good practice standards in planning contexts. However, these are not mandatory requirements and local authorities in England are not obliged to comply with them. This means that there are a number of corruption risks that arise from the lack of mandatory procedures in the way councillors engage external stakeholders, in the way they declare (more often fail to declare) conflicts of interest, and generally their conduct, for instance, in the transparency (or lack of) in recording donations.

Opportunities to accelerate commitment implementation
Defence: the government is undertaking an integrated review of foreign, defence, security and development policy. This is an opportunity to further streamline anti-corruption efforts throughout the government’s defence, security, development and foreign policies.

Local government: local authorities in England have the power to review and improve their safeguards against corruption by councillors and staff, which are contained in policies, protocols and guidance. For example, on top of existing statutory offences, such as a bribery, councils can tighten their codes of conduct and planning protocols to help address risks around the exchange of gifts and hospitality for favourable decisions. Councils usually have a standards committee, which tend to be responsible for reviewing their codes of conduct periodically. These periodic reviews are an opportunity to reflect on recent evidence published by government and TI-UK, and implement any recommendations arising from this research.

Recommendations
Borders, police, prisons and defence: government should provide more detailed information on its delivery of work regarding these critical sectors.

Local government:¹¹ to help reduce the risk of corruption in the planning process, we recommend that local authorities:

• Minute and publish all meetings with developers and their agents for major developments.
• Prohibit those involved in making planning decisions from accepting gifts and hospitality that risk undermining the integrity of the planning process.
• Increase transparency over gifts and hospitality.
• Improve the management of councillors’ financial interests.
• Prohibit all councillors from undertaking lobbying or advisory work related to their duties on behalf of clients.
• Manage the revolving door between the elective office and private business.
• Provide clear guidance and boundaries for councillors so they can better understand what is and is not acceptable behaviour.
• Increase transparency over investigations and enforcement action

We also recommend that the UK government legislate to provide a meaningful deterrent for serious breaches of the code of conduct by re-introducing the power for councils to suspend councillors for particularly egregious misconduct, with a right to appeal.