Corporate wrongdoing can have deep and broad consequences, compromising our fundamental, social, economic and environmental rights.
The role of civil society as a balance to the state is widely and rightly recognised, including in the new Civil Society Covenant. However, government is not the only large entity that wields significant power over the lives of individuals in the UK. Four out of five people work for private companies, one in five people live in private rented accommodation, and almost everyone gets some or all of their essential utilities – from water to broadband – provided by private companies. And of course almost all of our digital lives are channelled through and monetised by private companies, with associated concerns including monopoly power, privacy, disinformation and polarisation.
The private sector also has a significant role in delivering public services, including to vulnerable and marginalised groups. For example, 20% of the English prison population are held in privately run prisons, over 100,000 people in the UK asylum system are currently living in accommodation provided by three large private companies under government contracts, and across the UK over 350,000 people are in residential care or nursing homes run by the private sector.
Corporate wrongdoing can therefore have deep and broad consequences, compromising our fundamental, social, economic and environmental rights. Egregious examples including the Post Office / Horizon IT scandal leading to the wrongful imprisonment of over 200 staff, and the VW / Dieselgate deliberate cheating of exhaust tests leading to an estimated 124,000 premature deaths.
Alongside high-profile cases like these, there are many more examples of corporate harm, with over 120,000 enforcement actions brought against companies by government agencies across the four nations of the UK since 2010, involving issues such as financial misconduct, workplace abuses, environmental offences and anti-competitive practices.
However, in recent years, the combination of powerful and influential companies, deep cuts to the budgets and activity of regulators, rapidly changing technology, and limited access to justice for ordinary people mean that there are significant gaps in the accountability of the private sector.
There are civil society groups that seek to hold corporate power to account, whether as a direct focus, or as part of work to further human rights, climate justice, international development or other public benefit goals. This is a small, under-resourced but very creative area, with approaches ranging from promoting business ethics, to investigative journalism on corporate malpractice, to co-ordinating shareholder activism. Trade union organising is another important check on corporate power.
The Baring Foundation has for a number of years, through its Strengthening Civil Society programme, supported organisations within civil society to make effective use of the law and human rights-based approaches to tackle discrimination and disadvantage and bring about wider social change. In 2025, as part of considering the future direction of the programme, the Foundation commissioned four scoping papers on the themes of Corporate Accountability, Criminal Justice, Environment and Human Rights, and Human Rights.
My research for the Corporate Accountability theme concluded that there is a clear opportunity for the Baring Foundation to show leadership and add value by supporting civil society to use the law in relation to corporate accountability. Legal approaches to corporate accountability have delivered results in the past.
To give one example, in 2024 an equal pay case against the retailer Next by more than 3,500 current and former staff members led to an estimated redress in excess of £30 million. Equally importantly, legal tools and analysis short of litigation can help to influence policy, reveal or clarify information, and amplify marginalised voices in relation to corporate wrongdoing, often in association with public campaigns or other civil society activity. For example, successful complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on misleading environmental claims in advertising have then given greater weight to civil society claims of corporate greenwashing.
There are relatively few funders in this space, so focusing on corporate accountability and the law is a distinctive choice, with the potential for high impact, but it will require patience and long-term commitment.
Information about this new area of funding will be posted on this website and via our newsletter. Initial funding plans are likely to be shared in June 2026.
