The internet will be used in the next phase of the fight against corruption in third world countries, MPs were told on Tuesday.

Clare Short, the international development secretary, said a new website, which will be launched in the autumn, will provide advice learnt from anti-corruption initiatives run by the UK, Norway, the Netherlands and Germany.Short's department is currently spending £90 million on governance projects and working with international agencies such as the World Bank Institute to reform government systems and practices such as bribery.

"We don't quite have an anti-corruption strategy but we're pretty close to it," Short told the committee.

She explained the principles behind the programme. "Say you're building an education system. It's not sustainable until you've got the governance system in place," he said. "You have to get right inside the system to change it."

Corruption in third world countries existed on two levels MPs were told.

"There's a lot of corruption around drugs. You have to pay bribes to get anti-malaria drugs so it's the poor who suffer most. Grand corruption is more morally evil. It leads to horrendous losses of economic resources. It's the poor old poor that have to pay their taxes to pay it off. You've got to see it on both levels. Both need to be approached I different ways," she said.

Short told the Commons International Development select committee that high-level corruption was endemic in the third world. "The judiciary is corrupt in most developing countries sadly. If you look at the of the poor, one of the things that outrages them more than anything else is disorder and a lack of justice. It is the poor that can't pay their way out of it who suffer most," she said.

Part of the problem was a lack of experts to set up reform processes. "There's a dearth of good expertise in anti-corruption programmes. There is more and more research on where it is and the scale of it but on rooting it out there is a dearth," she said.

She explained the difference in the government's new approach, which involved working multi-laterally rather than with one country over a three-year period. "In past we said 'we'll do some schools or a water project'. It was a good project but it had no sense of sustainability or future," she said.

Short said that in Malawi the programme had made a major impact. She said: "It's big stuff. Corruption has become a big public issue. They're arresting people all over the place. It's a bit like child sex abuse. It always used to be there but wasn't talked about. Countries are beginning to confront it and as they do the people get angry about it. At least it's out in the open."

Barbara Follett asked the minister to give an example where the programme had failed. Short admitted: "We're having real difficulties in Kenya. The whole reform process could go off track, tragically. I hope we don't lose but it is pivoting there."

Short rejected calls from the MPs for the government to take a tougher stance against the Mugabe government in Zimbabwe but described the situation as "deeply worrying". "He is trying to frame what he is doing in an anti-British light. Loud noises actually inflame what Robert Mugabe does," she said.