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ASD launched the European Ethics and Anti-Corruption Task Force at the Farnborough Air Show 2006 and SBAC joined the group as a founder member. The Task Force prepared Common Industry Standards for anti-corruption to be applied across Europe which, after detailed consultations including independent advice from the International Chamber of Commerce, were approved by the ASD Council in April 2007. The Standards were then opened for adoption by the national trade associations of Europe and SBAC September 2007 Council agreed to adopt the Standards at the ASD Convention on 4 October 2007 in Barcelona .

Virtually all the aerospace and defence associations of Europe have adopted the Standards including the BNEA and the DMA in the UK. The Task Force has now turned its attention to helping the national associations to implement the Standards. In the UK, SBAC and DMA held a major conference in June 2008 to promote uptake of the Standards, which was addressed by the Rt Hon John Hutton, who was then the lead Cabinet Minister for anti-corruption (this role has since passed to Jack Straw). At the conference SBAC and DMA published a booklet to help smaller companies implement anti-corruption standards, a copy of which is available on this website.

SBAC is a member of the UK National Defence Business Ethics Forum and supports its work, holding regular meetings to exchange best practice and to hear the views of recognised experts on business ethics. The Forum has also contributed views into the ASD Task Force and has identified two key priorities in the implementation of the ASD standards on which it will focus. The first is that these should be regularly reviewed to keep pace with good practice in the industry and the second is the need to provide help to smaller companies to implement the Standards. SBAC, in cooperation with the DMA, is focussing particularly on support to SMEs.

Industry in Europe and the US accept that business ethics is a key topic. On 15 July 2008 at the Farnborough Air Show business leaders from both sides of the Atlantic, including Allan Cook, the CEO of Cobham, agreed that they should work jointly on this subject. They decided to launch a new initiative called the "International Forum on Business Conduct" to exchange best practice and identify convergence on common ethical standards. This new Forum aims to make concrete progress towards global industry standards by the time of the Paris Air Show in June 2009 and will build on the foundations laid by ASD's CIS and the United States' Defense Industrial Initiative (see attachment for further details).

US Defence Industries Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct brochure (2.0 MB)