9th December, London - Responding to media enquiries about the unanticipated brevity of the Transparency International UK annual Anti-Corruption Lecture, and the issues that the lecture did and did not address, a Transparency International UK spokesperson said:

"The purpose of Baroness Scotland's lecture was to address issues of global corruption, which were covered in her speech.  It gave an important insight in to the good governance agenda of the new Secretary-General, and into global corruption trends.  We can confirm that we had agreed with the Commonwealth Secretariat in light of recent allegations made against the Secretary-General that these allegations would be covered in the speech and subsequent Q&A.  However, we were informed the night before the lecture by the Commonwealth Secretariat that a complaint had been made to IPSO which would place restraints on what could be said. 

We can also confirm that the lecture and Q&A had been planned for 75 minutes, but due to last-minute changes in the Secretary-General's schedule the event was much shorter than anticipated, which to our great regret limited the time for audience interaction.

We are naturally extremely disappointed that, due to circumstances entirely out of the control of TI-UK, our annual lecture did not work out as planned, and would like to apologise to anyone who felt that their expectations were not met."

***ENDS***