Corruption is a problem in developing countries because poverty creates unbearable living conditions and early death. Money, for many, is survival and the moral problem of stealing (corruption being one form) may fade into the background. Corruption in the developed world has a different face. It is not a matter of survival. It is only a matter of greed. And the corruption takes forms which are “legal” and unnoticeable, hidden, private, euphemized and protected by laws designed by the same people who commit such acts of stealing from the general public.
Stealing the Health Service
Recently the UK government has embarked on a programme of inviting private companies to provide health services in competition with the public ones. The UK has had great successes in providing high quality health services for everyone, free at the point of delivery and paid for by taxes proportional to salary. This marvel is now under the biggest assault since its creation. Such moves towards privatization are being resisted by most professionals in the health service and a large sector of the population as it is clear that running services for profit will reduce the quality as no doubt the private sector will cherry pick the most profitable areas and leave the most difficult to the public providers.
Who are the people voting in Parliament to introduce these changes? The declared interests register in both the Commons and the Lords shows that a large number of those in favour of introducing private services into the NHS have in fact business interests in those companies or have been given money or other inducements by them. (A detailed list has been published by the Social Investigations blog). Describing it as “conflict of interests” must be the understatement of the year; in fact corruption is a much better term because the people carrying out these actions are in fact stealing from the general population. No doubt it will also induce more and more people to take up private health insurance, another part of the plan to transform the system into a US-style Managed Care misery.
The media campaign to justify destroying the NHS has seen numerous articles that stress mistakes in operations and horror stories about people being left on trolleys or waiting for a long time to be seen in casualty departments. The reality is that most people are still well looked after by the National Health Service in spite of increased workload for staff and worsening working conditions. The introduction of the private sector will also destroy the collective bargaining power of health workers.
Stealing taxes
Accountancy firms using the revolving door between private firms and Government (in this case, the Treasury) help wealthy clients avoid paying UK taxes, according to a report by the Commons public accounts committee published by The Guardian.
Four of the largest accountancy firms “have provided the government with expert accountants to draw up tax laws. But the firms went on to advise multinationals and individuals on how to exploit loopholes around legislation they had helped to write, the public accounts committee (PAC) found”.
In the same theme of taxes, “assets held offshore, beyond the reach of effective taxation, are equal to about a third of total global assets. Over half of all world trade passes through tax havens. Developing countries lose revenues far greater than annual aid flows. We estimate that the amount of funds held offshore by individuals is about $11.5 trillion – with a resulting annual loss of tax revenue on the income from these assets of about 250 billion dollars. This is five times what the World Bank estimated in 2002 was needed to address the UN Millenium Development Goal of halving world poverty by 2015”: Tax Justice Network
Directorships for the Boys
Privatization of public assets has been a source of Directorships for Members of Parliament and their friends, since it became the political dogma of all the governments since the Thatcher years. In this way, whether politicians keep or lose their seat is not very important as legislation they helped pass to privatize everything provides them with a nice little earner. In 2002 MPs and peers held a total of 819 company directorships between them. It is particularly worrying the number of parliamentarians who have shares or are directors of weapons manufacturing companies as their likely vote will be in the direction of promoting wars, a form of corruption that kills in a direct way but hides behind the “National Security” claimed need for secrecy.
