Friday's debate in the House of Assembly demonstrated the Government's "see no evil, hear no evil" approach to corruption, as columnist Christian Dunleavy notes on this page.

Indeed, the most amazing comment in the whole debate came from Premier Alex Scott, who said that even discussing the possibility of corruption in Bermuda would be bad for the Island's image.

This is akin to the Emperor has no clothes story, in which as long as no one told the poor old chap that he wasn't wearing anything, he assumed he looked terrific.

It is true that after exhaustive investigation of the Bermuda Housing Corporation, the Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions did not charge any publicly elected official with an offence.

Mr. Scott took that as a vindication of his members and seems now to believe that little more needs to be done.

That came in spite of statements from then-DPP Kulandra Ratneser that the anti-corruption legislation was desperately out of date and needed to be modernised. When the report came out, Mr. Scott said the legislation was being reviewed and modernisation would follow.

By last Friday, he was declaring that there was no corruption and that the Criminal Code provisions dealing with corruption only needed "tweaking".

Indeed, he said, the law already contained sentencing provisions for those convicted of an offence ? up to three years in prison and/or fines of $10,000.

He added that two measures to fight corruption would be adopted ? robust internal controls and modernising the Criminal Code to make sure more corruption cases were brought before the court.

A $10,000 fine is not a deterrent to corruption; it is an inducement. You could arguably steal hundreds of thousands of dollars, pay your fine and move on to enjoy your ill-gotten gains.

The broader question, according to the Government, is this. If Bermuda has no corruption, then why have anti-corruption laws at all? Is this not a punishment in search of a crime? You might as well have a law banning the hunting of elephants in Bermuda, when there are none.

The answer to that is no one, Mr. Scott and Telecommunications Minister Michael Scott apparently excluded, can stand up and say with absolute certainty that there is no corruption in Bermuda. Who knows? Until recently, it would have been easy to say that civil servants never stole public money. But in the last few years millions of dollars have allegedly been stolen.

And no one really knows when corruption takes place when there are no, for example, political finance laws on the books. Who knows who's buying who? And even if someone had been bought, it would be almost impossible to press charges.

The responsible position has to be that Bermuda needs anti-corruption laws for the same reason that any country does.

First, as the United Bermuda Party and former Government Minister Renee Webb said on Friday, you need to define precisely what corrupt practices are and what standards public servants should be held to.

Secondly, it is better to guard against the possibility of dishonesty in public service before it happens rather than afterwards. That's called closing the stable door before the horse bolts.