Live Debate: Lords Chamber

PNQ: Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton to ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support Nepal following the recent flooding in that country. Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Non-affiliated)

My Lords, that concludes oral. Kimbolton. >> My Lords, I beg leave to ask a question of which I have given private notice. The question is as follows. To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support Nepal following a recent flooding in that country. And I declare my interest as Deputy Colonel, Commandant, Brigade of Gurkhas.

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Before the Minister replies perhaps. Perhaps, if noble Lords wish to leave the chamber, they could do so quickly and quietly

15:40

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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My everyone in this House are with all those affected, including the families and loved ones of British nationals missing in this tragedy. The impacts of flooding in Nepal are devastating. As. As we all can see. The question is about Nepal. But I should remind members, noble nationals and their families. Foreign office staff and our embassy teams are working around the clock. Rapid deployment teams have been sent to Nepal. These will bolster our ability to support British nationals and their families.

We have also sent specialist humanitarian experts to support the response. We continue to be in very close contact with the Nepalese government. The Foreign Secretary spoke to Nepali Foreign Minister Shazia Kanwal on Thursday. He expressed Britain's solidarity with Nepal and offered our deepest condolences. As I say, our thoughts are with all those affected and we will continue to support both the people and the government of Nepal.

15:41

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Non-affiliated)

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I thank the Minister for that reply and and echo his comments. And our thoughts of your Lordships House are with friends and family of those affected, and indeed, our thanks to all of our staff at the embassy in Kathmandu, many of whom I know and are doing a fantastic job. I have three very quick questions, if I may. The first is, can I ask the Minister to pay particular attention to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority? This is the fledgling unit in the Nepalese government, which is coordinating all of the international support.

And if they do need further assistance, I hope that we would give it to them. Secondly, looking beyond the immediate crisis, Nepal, Nepal's biggest test, is actually yet to come and how to build back differently and not replicate the vulnerabilities that this disaster has exposed. So drawing on UK strengths in the science, risk modelling and climate finance, will the Minister commit to the long term support in helping Nepal become a global example of how countries understand, manage and finance climate risk whilst growing their economies? And my third very quick point is a very personal plea, perhaps on behalf of the Brigade of Gurkhas whose members would not forgive me if I did not express their desire as they did back after the earthquake in 2015, to be able to deploy and go and support their fellow countrymen in the rebuilding of their country.

But I recognise that is down to a request from Nepal and HMG. Thank you.

15:43

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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Yeah. noble Lord not just for his lifetime of service in military and government occupations and political. These political role, but also his passion and commitment to Nepal and the Gurkhas in particular. On his three points, he's absolutely right that that Britain has supported Nepal on disaster risk and the authority that he mentioned we should definitely continue to support. We've actually, the £5 million package that I mentioned builds on around about 100 million of UK support that has developed Nepal's climate resilience over the past 10 to 20 years, with strengthening resilience funds, with a Climate Smart Development Fund and a resilience adaptation fund.

And so there is strong partnership on those on those dimensions, and it will continue to be. So on the second point, I very much like the way he expressed. The noble Lord expressed the the ideal of helping Nepal build back differently. And as as noble Lord says, we do have the science, the business, and the political capacity to provide the kind of support that would enable that to be the case. And thirdly, I pay tribute to the Gurkhas, and I appreciate the noble Lords.

Reference to them, as the noble Lord also said, the support we're offering has to be led by the Nepalese government and partners on the ground, and I can assure noble Lords that the support we are continuing to provide is changing as the kinds of needs change in the. In the development of this crisis and the evolution of the kinds of challenges that the Nepalese are facing. And I wish them the very best. And him carrying out his role. I know he's visited Nepal, and I know that he'll be acutely aware of

15:45

Lord Purvis of Tweed (Liberal Democrat)

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the impact of this disaster, and I associate these benches with the words of the noble Lord, Lord words of the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, as well. And we support the efforts of the government and our embassy staff in offering the our embassy staff in offering the support that it is doing. I wish to ask the Minister a broader question when it comes to the crisis reserve. when it comes to the crisis reserve. In 2017, the OECD reported that the UK Humanitarian crisis reserve UK Humanitarian crisis reserve stood at £500 million.

In March this year. Baroness Chapman told the Commons Development Committee that it currently stands at a fifth of that, at £100 million, as a result of UK development assistance cuts. Will the Minister, in his new role with colleagues, work to try and restore the party consensus that existed before the development cuts to ensure that at least one area that can be restored would be the humanitarian crisis reserve, because we know, regrettably, that that is going to be needed in the future.

15:46

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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Well, thank. >> Well, thank. >> You for that welcome from the noble Lord, and I very much look forward to working working with him. I also want to take the opportunity, I also want to take the opportunity, based on the noble Lords remarks on our Foreign Office staff, to thank them personally for the amount of work that they are doing. They're working around the clock to supporting British nationals and their families in incredibly confusing and difficult conditions, and I want to pay tribute and thank them, thank them for that.

On the point about crisis reserve, I would love to establish a cross-party consensus. It is a matter of public record that the government has made tough decisions about Oda, and I'm pleased, however, to say that the response in the past week of the UK government to Nepal has been full, has been full, has been comprehensive. It's in partnership, it observes all the principles that I think are good. Crisis response should should show. So yes, there are financial challenges and I'm sure we'll return to those.

And of course, there are issues that arise from the budget decisions that have been made. But I'm pleased to say that the UK government's crisis response, I think, has been so far exemplary and of a huge help to the Nepalese government.

15:47

Lord Swire (Conservative)

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The government is doing in terms of responding to the tragedy that's unfolded over the last few weeks in Nepal. But could the noble Lord, Nepal. But could the noble Lord, the Minister, take back to his colleagues in the FCDO? The question of Bhutan, which shares many of the same characteristics of Nepal, but we have no permanent diplomatic representation in Bhutan. It sometimes gets overlooked. So when they are undertaking these studies, particularly in terms of preventing these things and early warning equipment, which Bhutan has very little of.

Could he please very little of. Could he please discuss these matters? As I say, with his colleagues? Well, I thank the noble Lord for

15:47

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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that. It's an extremely important point that this is not going to be point that this is not going to be the last kind of incident. It sort sadly, and there are lots of countries that share geographical, countries that share geographical, climate and economic features that that that we can learn from. And so that that we can learn from. And so I think cross-referencing the successes and shortcomings of, of, of how the world has responded to

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of how the world has responded to this is an important, important Britain. My Lord. Having been brought. Up.

15:48

Lord Beamish (Labour)

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My Lords. >> My Lords, Lords, the noble Lords, Lancaster mentioned the Gurkhas and our thoughts are obviously with all those who serve in in British forces at the moment and their families in Nepal. Could the Minister say what support is being given to the Gurkha Welfare Trust and other organisations which support Gurkha veterans in Nepal?

15:48

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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I'm afraid I don't. I apologise to noble Lord. I don't have details to noble Lord. I don't have details on that, but I will endeavour to get back on with more details on the kind of support that we're

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offering. My Lords. My Lords. Having been brought up with the

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Having been brought up with the Gurkhas from birth with my late father who was present, the Gurkha Brigade in India, to follow on from

15:49

Lord Bilimoria (Crossbench)

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the previous question on what Major General Lord Lancaster said, what specific help is the government specific help is the government giving to the Gurkhas in this country whose families have been affected by this awful tragedy, affected by this awful tragedy, including the Gurkha Welfare Trust? And is the UK government working with the Indian government? Because with the Indian government? Because there are many pilgrims like pilgrims from here who've gone from India to Mount Kailash who have been tragically affected by this. been tragically affected by this.

Are we coordinating with India?

15:49

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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Well, in general we are. Look, let me say a little bit more about the kind of support we're offering. We've deployed consular staff to We've deployed consular staff to the region who are providing 24/7 assistance and advice to family and friends worried about loved ones in Nepal, China and the UK. We are. UK policing is also supporting the response through deployment of family liaison officers to the families of those affected. They're providing dedicated support to affected families in the UK.

15:50

Lord Camoys (Conservative)

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I also congratulate. >> I also congratulate. >> The Minister on his new appointment. I declare my interest as chair of the UK charity Nepal Nature Trust, a member of the governing board of Nepal's National Trust for Nature Conservation. The UK Met Office previously helped Nepal develop flood early warning systems. Will the government now build on that work and help develop the Himalayan equivalent of a tsunami warning system that would work across borders, capable of detecting sudden glacial collapses like that seen last week, which current systems were not able to deal with, and giving downstream communities precious minutes to reach safety.

15:50

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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Well, thank you for that question. And noble Lord points to an important element that I refer an important element that I refer to in answer to an earlier question about the lessons that need to be learned, lessons that need to be learnt, not just by consular learnt, not just by consular political and and other bodies, but also by scientists and the Met Office. I'm sure we'll be playing a huge part in this because of the international collaborations that they already they already have and will continue to have.

15:51

Lord Hussain (Liberal Democrat)

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According to many international organisations, including the National Development Programme, India and Pakistan are among the highest among the nations who are at the highest risk of cloudburst and and glacier bursts. Could I ask the Minister what our government is doing to help those countries to put in early warning signs and other measures to deal with these catastrophes when they happen?

15:51

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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Well, thank you, noble Lord, for that. Part of bilateral assistance includes climate support across the includes climate support across the piece regularly, including to India, Pakistan. I think I think it's fair to say that as a result of this catastrophe, which is what it is, there's going to have to be a focus on the kind of updating, the kind of support that will be need to be provided, not just by the UK government, but by partners across the world for countries that may indeed face similar challenges.

And I'm sure that's work that we will be leading and looking forward to.

15:52

Lord Popat (Conservative)

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We have a very special relationship with Nepal, especially the Gurkha soldiers serving the British Army for the last six decades. What happened was tragic, and I welcome the financial support the government is giving. But I think we need to give more than that. They need for the medical supplies. They need emergency shelter, particularly. A lot of bodies are still under mud rescue, logistic, temporary reconstruction of housing and of course, infrastructure restoration. I'm sure we can do more than what we have done so far.

Can the Minister please take it to his office and discuss this and debate this, to see what more we can do to help the people in this difficult time.

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Thank you. The noble Lord Katz. I think that's a good, good opportunity for me to just say a little bit about the kind of support we are providing. We're providing up to three quarters of a million through the Red cross million through the Red cross movement for emergency humanitarian assistance, for clean water, shelter, first aid, and supplies up to a million through the Start Fund Nepal for local organisations that are delivering life saving

15:53

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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assistance and up to a quarter of a million to deploy UK humanitarian experts and strengthen coordination efforts. And on top of that, of course, there are the contributions of the the world Bank, which and the Asian Development Bank to which we're contributing. So there's there is a lot of support. I want to reassure the noble Lord, though, who's completely right, that there are a variety, a bewildering variety of needs that are going to need to be to be served, that we are in close contact with the Nepalese government and authorities about the kind of support that we can offer, where it's complementary to what they're providing, where, where, where it's being provided anyway, and where there are gaps in the future that need to be provided.

Those are exactly the conversations that are ongoing with a view to exactly the priorities he discussed.

15:54

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Crossbench)

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My Lord, my. >> Join me in paying. >> Tribute to Rajendra Diwali. >> The head teacher. Who saved 900 school children from the floods, and hundreds more by alerting the bus drivers by not delivering to the school. And it's an example of individual heroism, which I think we should manage.

15:54

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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Thank you, noble Lady. For example, I do join with that, and I think like other noble Lords, I've think like other noble Lords, I've been struck by the extraordinary human stories over the past, over the past week. And I think it's the past week. And I think it's worth saying again, that we can only imagine the horror and terror only imagine the horror and terror of of family members who have no idea where their family members are at this moment. So it's a story. It's, it's, it's a, it's a tragedy that's full of extraordinary heroism, but also deep horror and confusion.

And I'm glad that the UK government is playing its part in supporting as much as possible.

15:55

The Earl of Courtown (Conservative)

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My Lord, I'd like to thank the Minister for his contributions and Minister for his contributions and his update on this devastating event that happened in Nepal. I'd also like to send a join of other noble Lords in sending our condolences to the families of the victims, and also support to those responding, whether part of our diplomatic service or those from other countries and the Nepalese people. But, my Lords, I just wondering we've heard a lot about what's been happening in Nepal. I was just wondering if the noble Lord can contribute a little bit more about what's actually happening in Tibet and under the Chinese authorities.

Are there any British nationals who are facing difficulties there? And have we any idea of the number of British nationals in that part of the world?

15:55

Lord Wood of Anfield, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Labour)

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Well, thank you for that statement, which I agree with and and also for raising the issue of China. This has been discussed as a China. This has been discussed as a Nepalese issue. As we know, this is a partly because of the pilgrimage that a lot of people are on. This is a passage that goes across the Nepalese and Chinese border. Just to give an update on numbers, we have 36 British people currently unaccounted for. We do. We are working with Chinese authorities as well as the as the Nepalese authorities.

I think it would be unfair to say anything more about the numbers of about the individual cases of British nationals. But that's those are the cases that the British consular authorities and British support is catering to at

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the moment. My Lords, this may be an appropriate moment for any noble appropriate moment for any noble Lords who wish to leave to do so quietly before I call the next

15:57

Business of the House

>> Financial Services and Markets Bill. Order of consideration. Lord Pitt-Watson. >> My Lords, I beg to move the

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My Lords, I beg to move the motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. The question is this motion be agreed to as many of that opinion say, content. The contrary not content, the contents have it. content, the contents have it. Third Reading of the Social Housing Bill. Baroness Taylor of Stevenage. Bill. Baroness Taylor of Stevenage.

15:57

Lord Pitt-Watson, The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Labour)

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My Lords, I.

15:58

Legislation: Social Housing Bill – third reading

first to give my sincere thanks to noble Lords from across the House for the care, expertise and

15:58

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government) (Labour)

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constructive challenge they have brought to this important piece of legislation. As someone for whom Social Housing Council housing provided the secure, safe and affordable foundation as I was growing up. This is an issue very growing up. This is an issue very close to my heart, and I know that I've heard that from many members across the chamber as well. I would like to thank the opposition front benches for their thoughtful and robust challenge of this bill and their constructive engagement, and I would particularly like to thank Baroness Lady Scott, who started the bill off with me, as she has done with so many bills over the past couple of years, and to the noble Lady, Baroness O'Neill, very for her very constructive and courteous work that we've done together as we've gone through the process of the Bill and, of course, to Lord Jamieson, I'd also like to thank Baroness Thornhill and Baroness Pinnock for their very significant contributions to the Bill and for their support for.

Much of what's been trying to be done. Can I also thank the noble Lord bird for his passion and dedication over a long period of time to achieving long term solutions to homelessness and Baroness Nye and my noble friend Baroness Hyde for their advocacy for victims of violence against women and girls. As the bill went through its passage, I would also like to thank the noble Lord Young of Cookham for in particular, for thoughtful and constructive contributions throughout the Bill's passage on shared ownership.

I know many will welcome the attention he has brought to the challenges that some shared owners face. I'm also grateful to those across the House who have been particularly engaged with matters relating to the bill. Your contributions have illuminated the issues this bill aims to tackle and helped us improve the legislation itself, and this is reflected in the planned Commons amendments relating to strengthening protections for victims of domestic abuse, right to buy rural criteria and the disposals notification period. We are also undertaking rapid work on exploring policy options for access for safety checks and security of tenure for those fleeing violence.

While there have inevitably been differences of opinion, there has been broad agreement on the fundamental challenge that we face. Too many families are unable to access a decent, safe, secure and affordable home, and too many households remain on waiting lists, and too many communities have seen the stock of social housing decline over time. The only long term solution to our housing crisis is to build at scale, as we did in the 40s and 50s when my town was built under the leadership of the new Prime Minister, we are committed to supporting councils to build at a scale not seen in decades, and this bill is crucial to that aim.

Finally, I am grateful to Ellie, Hermione, Beatrice, Lucy, Alex, Liam and Victoria who have worked on this bill alongside the policy teams, lawyers and of course, my private office, without whom I wouldn't be doing any of this. I'd also like to pay tribute to all the parliamentary staff and the doorkeepers, clerks, security, public Bill office, without whom

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none of us would be here. I beg to move. The question is that this bill now be read a third time, as there now be read a third time, as there many other opinion will say content, content. The contrary not content. The contents have it. The question The contents have it. The question is this bill do now pass.

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is this bill do now pass. We on these benches positively welcomed this. This bill. Anything welcomed this. This bill. Anything that preserves social housing was particularly welcome. So the Right

16:01

Baroness Thornhill (Liberal Democrat)

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to Buy proposals were indeed very valuable. And also the work to protect vulnerable tenants, those protect vulnerable tenants, those who were victims of domestic violence, and the tidying up and violence, and the tidying up and the repealing of old legislation was frankly never used because it was completely unworkable. So all was completely unworkable. So all of that said, but I think across the House, we were all disappointed the House, we were all disappointed with the very narrow scope of the bill, and I think that was reflected in the number of amendments and the quality of the debate.

I think we we wanted more, but understood the Minister to say, yes, it's a narrow, focussed bill that this is what it's doing. So therefore, Minister, I would say the two strands you mentioned, we on these benches really would seek reassurance on. And that was the excellent work done by Lord Young of Cookham on shared housing, shared ownership and that of Lord Cameron of Lochiel on the plight of rural housing that came through so strongly that we feel we've got to have some follow up to that, and we will both pursue and support that.

I would like to thank the Minister's willingness to engage with us, and she is she was and is always very generous with her time. And I'd also like to to praise the constructive spirit of the newish opposition front bench. Now, it has to be said, although we strongly disagreed with their stance on the eligibility of social housing, and we opposed their efforts to restrict it, we did agree on lots of other issues around transparency and accountability on better than one for one replacement, and we did share their concerns about some rsls Lord Best, not all about their effectiveness, particularly with regard to anti-social behaviour.

So these are all issues that I'm sure we can visit in other ways. But with that said, we are very pleased to see this bill progress and thank everyone who had anything to do with it. I won't repeat a long list. And to all noble Lords who took part in the debate.

16:04

Lord Young of Cookham (Conservative)

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Being very briefly to follow up >> Being very briefly to follow up what the noble Lady has just said about shared ownership. The noble Lady, the Minister will recall the Lady, the Minister will recall the government suffered a very, very significant defeat by some 86 votes. It was the first defeat of the Burnham administration on the Monday before we rose, and this was on the issue of shared ownership. The Minister was good enough to concede that we do need improvements, but she wasn't able to go quite as far as the amendment in my name, supported by others went.

Will she agree to discussions before the Commons addresses the Bill to see whether we can find a way through on shared ownership in order to try and bring this to a conclusion? And if we are to do that, she will need to go a little bit further than she was able to in July. Can I ask her whether there is some flexibility in the government's position?

16:04

Lord Best (Crossbench)

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Yes. >> Yes. >> My Lords, I'd like to add a crossbench voice to the thanks due to the noble Baroness, the Minister to the noble Baroness, the Minister and the Bill team, not just for listening. In numerous meetings to the case made for a series of amendments we had proposed, but for the actions being taken as a result, as I can testify from many years trying to improve the housing bills before us, change seldom follows directly from adoption of an unaltered amendment accepted by or imposed upon the government.

But change can be achieved nonetheless. And in this bill, thanks to commitments made by the Minister, progress has been forthcoming on a range of important issues. The value of these improvements, which will be embodied in better guidance from government Statutory Instruments that contain the small print. And yes, some government amendments should not be underestimated. They include better defined exemptions for right to buy sales in rural areas. Pressed by Lord Cameron of Dillington and myself, additional protections for tenants in domestic abuse cases championed by the noble Lady Baroness Neate and her supporters.

Better practice for those losing their social housing because police advice has been to leave accommodation targeted by violent gangs, a longer time scale for housing associations to notify local authorities before selling off precious social housing. After several fruitful meetings involving the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Local Government Association and others, clarification of the law to enable social landlords to gain access to properties to carry out safety checks, but only after meeting strict conditions for assessing vulnerability for tenants, giving adequate notice before entry, and so on, as advocated by the tenant representatives of the G 15 residence group.

So the bill has led to a whole range of significant changes, mostly non-legislative, but effective nonetheless. Thanks to the noble Baroness, the Minister, listening and acting, not least in response to the crossbenchers appreciated.

16:07

Lord Jamieson (Conservative)

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Thank you. had the opportunity to recharge their batteries over the summer. As I see we will have a rather busy schedule over the coming few months. Now, the recess has provided an opportunity to reflect on this bill and, as I think has been mentioned by my friends in the Liberal Democrats, despite being named the social housing bill, its real focus has been to restrict tenants rights to buy their own homes. Now, we oppose that approach. Right to buy has been one of the greatest drivers of social mobility this country has ever seen, enabling millions of families to build capital and stand on their own two feet.

We are the party of opportunity. Whilst it seems that the party opposite and some others favour increased state dependency, we on these benches believe combining right to buy with a one for one replacement policy with 100% retention of sale proceeds introduced by the last conservative government would see increased availability of social homes and deliver the new homes. We all want to see. With 1.34 million people on council housing waiting lists, we have also sought to address how the current stock of 5.3 million social homes is managed, cracking down on fraud, reducing under-occupation and encouraging those who can afford it to move on.

As well. As the noble Baroness mentioned, looking at greater transparency, this move could free up hundreds of thousands of social homes for those British citizens truly in need. We have also pursued amendments to address the problems within shared ownership, and I thank my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham for his work in this area, and we appreciate the Minister's commitment to look at this. But I am at one with my noble friend, Lord Young of Cookham that more needs to be done.

This is a key area. Whilst this House discussed its practical implementation, we strongly welcome the government's commitment to tackling the issues of domestic abuse victims face in the social housing system. Finally, I would like to place on record my sincere thanks to the Minister for the time she has taken to engage outside the chamber and for the considerable work she has done in steering this bill through the House. Her professionalism has been greatly appreciated across your Lordships House. I thank my noble friends for their support over the many hours in this chamber, and all noble Lords who have engaged generously throughout.

In particular, I thank my noble friends, Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Baroness O'Neill of Bexley. I'd also like to thank those, so to speak, not in the chamber. Amrita, Richard and Hannah and Henry, who've all provided considerable help. I'd also like to thank all the staff and doorkeepers. Fortunately, this was not quite as long and strenuous as some of the other bills we have done. This bill may not deliver the housing our country needs, but our debates have shown that your Lordship House remains committed to addressing this issue.

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My Lords, can I echo the noble Lord Jamieson? Welcome back to the House. I omitted to do that when I stood up earlier. It's great to be stood up earlier. It's great to be back here. And if he thinks this bill has been a bit less painful, I would remind him we've got the would remind him we've got the elections bill next, so I look forward to those debates. Thank the forward to those debates. Thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for her comments.

She's quite right. This is a very narrowly scoped bill, This is a very narrowly scoped bill, and perhaps the title might suggest otherwise, but the reason it's been so narrowly focussed is because there is a complete review of the allocations process going on simultaneously, and those things can be changed without going through a primary legislation route. She was right to refer to both shared ownership and rural issues. Both things we're still debating. And indeed the noble Lord young raised the issue of shared ownership.

Of course, the department is hoping and looking forward to further discussions with him as the bill makes its progress through the Commons, and I'm happy to meet with him at any time to try and move this on. I thank the noble Lord Best for all the work he did during the course of the bill,

16:11

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government) (Labour)

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particularly around the issues of access for safety issues, because I do think this is a very key issue do think this is a very key issue for our housing providers that they are able to access. We put a lot of are able to access. We put a lot of stress on them in terms of them insisting that their properties are safe and they need the support to safe and they need the support to do that, but there is more work to be done on that before we can move that forward.

The noble Lord that forward. The noble Lord Jamieson I, I know that we have we do have fundamental differences about the purpose of this bill. I would say, though, that the fatal flaw in the right to buy process and our government is not withdrawing right to buy. We don't think that's the right thing to do. But the fatal flaw was not replacing those properties. So I've got towns like mine where we went down from over 3000 council homes to 8000. And that's been a big it's been a big generator of some of the housing issues that we've seen over the years.

So while this bill aims to make sure that we get the balance right between giving people the opportunity to buy their own home without impacting unnecessarily on that housing supply, the issues around fraud and under-occupation that he mentions can be dealt with outside of legislation. And I know that councils are looking at that all the time as well. So I'm grateful again for all the contributions

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that have been made. I beg to move. The question is this, Bill, do now pass as many of that opinion, say, content, the contrary, not content. The contents have it. Second Reading of the Public Office Second Reading of the Public Office Accountability Bill. Lord Lemos.

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I hope all noble Lords had a good break over the summer. Excuse me. As perhaps noble Lords have me. As perhaps noble Lords have noticed, we've been beavering away at the Ministry of Justice. If you get a call from number ten, as I did on the last day before recess,

16:13

Legislation: Public Office (Accountability) Bill – second reading Lord Lemos, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Labour)

be careful what you wish for. I thank the many noble Lords who've interrupted their summers to meet me, and I appreciate their time and me, and I appreciate their time and their commitment enormously. My Lords, I beg to move that this bill Lords, I beg to move that this bill be now read a second time. My Lords, it's a privilege to open the debate on this bill. It is a long overdue on this bill. It is a long overdue piece of legislation, one which will deliver one of the biggest constitutional changes in the relationship between the public and the state for generations.

And we should not underestimate the importance and the impact it could have. I want to start, as I should, by paying tribute to those who have fought to get us here. The Hillsborough families experienced the most awful injustice. The state turned on them exactly when it should have been on their side. They never gave up on the truth and ultimately getting the justice they deserve. They insisted that no one should ever have to go through what they went through.

It is their courage and determination. My Lord, that my Lords, that brought us to your Lordships House today with this legislation in front of us, I want also to pay tribute to members of your Lordships House for their determined and courageous work over many years and indeed decades. Many peers today, many peers here today have stood by the families and supported them. Please forgive me. I don't have time to mention everyone and time is short. I'm also mindful that it is not just the Hillsborough families whose week work has brought us to this point.

There has been a coalition of families and campaign groups who have fought for the truth, and I want to thank all of them on behalf of the government that this be this bill is being debated today, and I'm pleased to note that some of them are in the public gallery today, and many others will be watching our proceedings. I'm sure all speakers in this debate will keep that in mind. And I want to warmly welcome to your Lord. Warmly welcome them to your Lordships House today.

My Lords, we have seen time and time again why this Bill is so vital. The Post Office Horizon scandal infected blood Grenfell and most recently, the shocking Nottingham maternity scandal all involved a lack of candour and effort to conceal the truth. In some cases, attempts were even made to create false narratives against the victims. As well as these well known examples, we must also bear in mind the many individual cases where the state has not just failed in its duty, but actively worked against the people it has wronged.

It is disgraceful. The public should be able to expect that our public institutions will do everything reasonably possible to prevent serious failures from happening. They should also expect be able to expect that when something does go wrong, these institutions will tell the truth. And this is a key point to which we will return in the debate. Tell the truth quickly. That requires more than candour. When someone is called to an inquiry, inquest or an investigation, public servants must know that when something has gone wrong, there is an obligation to come forward and say so.

They should be able to do so without fear of professional consequences. And it should be clear what is required of them if they believe there is wrongdoing or behaviour that falls below what is expected, there should be routes for them to report this. The aim of this Bill is to change the culture of public bodies. I want to stress that point once and for all. No family should have to fight for the truth about what happened to their loved ones. No family should face a profound disparity in legal representation, and no public official should be in fear that they will be asked to lie, conceal the truth or state.

Stay silent. That is our intention for this bill. My Lords, I will now turn to set out the measures in the Bill, starting with the two duties of candour it creates. The first is the statutory duty of candour and assistance, requiring all public servants and officials to come forward proactively, as I've said, and to act with candour, transparency and frankness in all inquiries and investigations seeking to establish the truth. Failure to comply with the intention of impeding the investigation or being reckless in doing so will be a criminal offence punishable by up to two years imprisonment.

The duty will apply to statutory and non-statutory inquiries, coroners and investigations and inquiries called by local authorities, with a powerful Ministers to extend it to other types of investigation through secondary legislation. While principally focussed on the public sector, it will also apply to private sector bodies such as those delivering public functions, those with health and safety responsibilities and relevant public sector contractors. These measures will apply across the United Kingdom, and I thank the devolved governments for their close work with officials in the Ministry of Justice and the Cabinet Office.

My Lords, I know there has been particular interest in how the duty will apply to the intelligence services. The government has always been clear that the intelligence services are within the scope, but we have listened to concerns about the application of the duty to individuals and the handling of sensitive information. Amendments made in the other place ensure the duty applies fully to all current and former intelligence services personnel, while using established procedures to protect national security information. What this means in practice is that where an individual employee of a national security body receives a request under the duty for protected information, they must pass that information onto the head of the relevant authority rather than directly to the inquiry or investigation.

The head of the authority is then responsible for providing that information, subject to the existing legal and practical safeguards on disclosure. Where necessary, restrictions on disclosure can be sought through existing legal routes, including in exceptional cases, converting proceedings into a secure statutory inquiry. The amendments also make clear that responsibility for notifying an inquiry, inquest or investigation about sensitive material rests with the national security body to which that information belongs, where another public authority holds a copy, it must inform the relevant national security body, allowing that body to assess the material in its wider context and ensure the appropriate safeguards are applied.

This means, my Lords, the duties applies in full to the intelligence services while providing confidence to the public and to our international partners that sensitive national security information will continue to be protected. And I want to particularly thank the chair and members of the Intelligence and Security Committee for their constructive work with the government in reaching this clear and balanced position. My Lords, there is also a legal duty established by this Bill for public authorities to promote and maintain high standards of ethical conduct, which includes having a code containing a professional duty of candour for all public servants.

These codes of ethical conduct will be rooted in the seven Nolan Principles. It must set out clear expectations for conduct, consequences for breaching them, and routes for reporting misconduct, making protected disclosures and raising complaints. Public authorities will in turn have a duty to promote and maintain high standards of ethical conduct among their employers employees. This is a cornerstone of the government's approach. While codifying good practice in port is important, the purpose here is to go further. The purpose is prevention.

We want to create a culture in which wrongdoing is identified and confronted early, before institutional defensiveness takes hold, and before failures are compounded by attempts to conceal them. My Lords, Hillsborough demonstrated the terrible consequences when public servants deliberately mislead the public and the media in order to spread a false narrative. The families were denied the truth and that injustice persisted for decades. The law. This law should provide a powerful deterrent against such conduct ever happening again.

This bill therefore creates a new offence of misleading the public. It will apply where a public authority or official intends to mislead the public, or is reckless as to that possibility, and knows or ought to know that their conduct is seriously improper. That is a deliberately high threshold. The conduct must involve significant or repeated dishonesty on matters of significant concern to the public. The act must cause or risk causing harm, whether economic, physical or psychological, and it must represent a significant departure from what would have been expected of that person in carrying out their functions.

These safeguards ensure that minor or inconsequential matters are not criminalised. Likewise, legitimate activity such as undercover policing will not be affected. The offence is targeted at serious misconduct of the kind that we witnessed at Hillsborough. Those convicted will face up to two years in prison and an unlimited fine. The bill also replaces the common law offence of misconduct in public office, with two new statutory offences, serious improper acts and breach of duty to prevent death or serious injury.

This will bring greater clarity to the law defining who is covered, the conduct that is

16:29

Lord Keen of Elie (Conservative)

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captured and the consequences of abusing public office. It will ensure that officials who abuse ensure that officials who abuse their position or fall short of the behaviour expected of those in public office, will continue to public office, will continue to face serious consequences, including up to ten years in prison for the offence of serious improper for the offence of serious improper acts and up to 14 years for breach of duty to prevent death or serious of duty to prevent death or serious injury.

My Lords, let me now turn to the bill's measures in respect of legal aid to many bereaved families. Go to inquests seeking answers about the death of a loved one, only to find themselves facing the full weight of the state. Public bodies arrive with experienced lawyers, while families without access to publicly funded support are left to represent themselves, meet the costs personally or turn to crowdfunding. This is a massive and indefensible asymmetry. This bill will address that profound imbalance.

It will ensure greater parity by providing bereaved families with access to help and advocacy, regardless of their financial circumstances, while removing burdensome bureaucracy. At one of the most difficult moments of their lives, the cost will rightly fall to the relevant public authorities or their responsible government departments where they are interested persons. At an inquest, the Bill will place a duty on them to consider whether their own legal representation is necessary and proportionate, taking account of the support available to families and their obligations to support the investigation.

Establish the facts of what happened. But effective participation is about more than representation. The experience of families in this situation has informed our approach, and the bill will require guidance setting clear principles for how public authorities should participate in inquests. It will also empower coroners and inquiry chairs to raise concerns. Excuse me, raise concerns about the conduct of public authorities. Or their legal representatives. Excuse me. At an inquiry or inquest. The principle is simple, my Lords.

An inquest or inquiry is not a contest to be won. Those representing the state should approach it not as adversaries, but with sensitivity and respect, and with the proper purpose of helping to establish the truth, learn lessons and provide bereaved families with the answers they deserve. My Lords, the measures I have set out today are substantial, but. But the principles behind them are simple. First, that we should create a culture in our public institutions that prevents failures from happening in the first place.

And second, where something does go wrong, the truth must come out fully, candidly and without delay, because delay has a cost. Every year spent fighting for answers is another year in which families live with uncertainty, their grief prolonged by unanswered questions. Difficult truths are always painful, my Lords, but concealing them or allowing them to emerge only after years of struggle prolongs and significantly compounds that pain. This house brings formidable experience to the issues addressed by the bill, and I know noble Lords will want to scrutinise it closely.

The government, I can say on behalf of the government that we will approach that scrutiny constructively, and I look forward to hearing contributions from across the House today and to work working closely with noble Lords as the Bill proceeds to the later stages. My Lords, we cannot undo the justice injustices that brought us here, or the pain and the anguish endured, endured by those who, through no fault of their own, were forced to fight for the truth. But we can learn from all this, my Lords.

We can seek to prevent the failures of the past from happening again. We can ensure that when public institutions do fail, the instinct of the state is not to close ranks or wait to be challenged, but to come forward, tell the truth, account for what went wrong and put it right. I beg to move you.

16:38

Baroness Hamwee (Liberal Democrat)

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The question is this, Bill be

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now read a second time. My Lords, I.

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Begin by paying tribute to the families of those who died at the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989, their decades long campaign for justice and accountability have and accountability have demonstrated a resilience and dignity that should inspire us all. I'm sure noble Lords are united in the determination that such a disaster should not happen again, and that if such a situation were to reoccur, the institutions of the state would act with transparency and honesty. And that is the spirit in which I rise to speak on this bill today.

Before turning to specific provisions, I must note something about the legislative journey of the bill in 2024. It was promised as one of the first acts of this government. And yet here we are two years later, still debating the provisions. It is a bill that now looks very different to its original proposals. At the very least, this speaks to the genuine complexity of balancing the duty of candour with the imperatives of national security. Despite the long wait to get to this point, the government's amendments addressing intelligence services were proposed with little more than 24 hours notice before the Commons scrutiny, and this is arguably one of the most important clauses of the Bill, with serious potential ramifications for safety and national security.

Whatever one's view on those amendments, they deserve more careful consideration than that time frame allowed, and it is therefore the duty of this House to provide detailed and deliberate scrutiny that the Commons schedule did not permit. I would like to thank the noble Lord, the Minister Lord Lemos, for engaging constructively with the

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concerns that we have raised. His recent letter To me, engaging. With some of my early concerns.

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With some of my early concerns. And his. Willingness in meeting. With me. Ahead of this debate. Demonstrates that. The government is.

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The government is. Prepared to engage in genuine dialogue. The questions I raise today are. Therefore presented.

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Therefore presented. In a spirit of collaboration and constructive feedback. We seek to constructive feedback. We seek to understand the bill better not to obstruct it. With that in mind, I turn to several matters that merit the minister's attention. First, the scope and operation of the duty of candour. Clause one sets out the purpose of the Bill, but the duty of candour itself is framed in expansive and potentially uncertain language. To act with candour, transparency, frankness, promptly and proactively, with full disclosure of evidence, and without favour to one's own position.

My Lords, this raises important questions about when this duty is engaged and how it operates in practice. Clause two requires a person to notify an inquiry that their acts or information may be relevant. But when does a person subject to this obligation? Is it constantly triggered or only when an inquiry has been formally established? The Minister's letter helpfully suggests that this obligation can be, and I quote, switched off, unquote, depending on circumstances. For instance, in a large inquiry where it would be impractical to require all potential witnesses to come forward.

But, my Lords, what mechanism exists to switch off this obligation? Who decides to switch off this obligation? And what recourse does an individual have if they believe the obligation has been wrongly triggered or applied? Furthermore, clause three provides that the duty does not require breaching obligations under other

16:46

Baroness Manningham-Buller (Crossbench)

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legislation, but the bill creates many, many new duties, and I would be grateful if the noble Lord, the be grateful if the noble Lord, the Minister could explain whether the duty of candour interacts with existing statutory duties. For example, the duty of candour already embedded in National Health already embedded in National Health Service regulations or in the Freedom of Information Acts exemptions. I would also invite the exemptions. I would also invite the Minister to explain whether there is any guidance or code of practice plan to clarify these instructions.

My Lords, the Bill is drafted, also raises issues relating to evidential burdens and the long standing right against self-incrimination. Clause two contemplates the extension of the duty of candour to, and I quote other investigations, unquote, beyond inquiries. And it would appear that this might include police misconduct investigations. But, my Lords, here we face a potential difficulty if a public official is required under clause two to disclose information or acts in the course of an investigation, and if they declined to do so without good reason, they may face prosecution under clause five.

Yet if that investigation subsequently becomes criminal in nature, that same official might face the consequence of self-incrimination. The bill does not require an official to incriminate themselves, but it does inadvertently create a trap where an official must choose between incriminating themselves or facing prosecution for a breach of the clause two duty. I have been told that the Bill does not intend to compel criminals to self-incriminate, but I must confess I remain unclear as to how this will work in practice, and perhaps the Minister can provide clarification today on the interplay between the duty of candour and the privilege against self-incrimination.

My Lords, Clause six has also been a source of concern, and I know other noble Lords are taking a close interest in this part of the Bill, so I won't go into it in detail today, other than to say that the burden placed on the security services must be closely monitored to ensure that they're going to be properly resourced, and that their operational requirements are not going to be constrained by this further burden on their resources. There will also need to be a means of assuring foreign services with whom we exchange intelligence, that this legislation will not weaken control of sensitive material.

And rather than simply saying existing safeguards will be sufficient, it would be better for the government to provide clear guidance on how existing controls will be operated under this new regime, and this is something that I expect we will return to at Committee stage. The Lords I now turn to clause ten, which imposes a duty on public authorities to promote standards of ethical conduct, and I would be grateful if the Minister could indicate either today or in writing, before Committee stage, what analysis the government has undertaken on the costs of this requirement, and what assessment has been made of its likely effectiveness.

There is always a risk of a further bureaucratic burden being placed on authorities who are not properly resourced. The Lords I finally turned to some suggestions from the noble Lord, the Minister for the creation of certain new offences to improve public official accountability. The Bill creates new statutory offences to replace the common law offence of misconduct in public office. These include the offence of misleading the public. Under clause 11 and the offence of seriously improper acts under clause 12. We are anxious to explore whether these provisions adequately captured two scenarios.

First, the deliberate misleading of a Minister by a civil servant and second, the deliberate destruction of documents by a public official. And these are grave matters, and I am unclear as to whether the proposed new offences would actually capture them, and I would be grateful to the noble Lord, the Minister, if he

16:54

The Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops)

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could explain the government's perception of these issues. My Lords, the Bill addresses matters Lords, the Bill addresses matters of profound importance to public trust in state institutions. This trust in state institutions. This House has a duty to scrutinise it carefully, and I am confident that with the Minister's continued with the Minister's continued engagement, we will do so constructively, and I look forward to further discussion at Committee to further discussion at Committee stage of this Bill. I am obliged to your Lordships.

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My Lords, I must stand in for Lord Marks, who is sorry he can't be here today. From these benches be here today. From these benches we support the bill, my noble friends, including a Liverpool voice, will speak from involvement with various issues. Scandals, as will other noble Lords. I know, but will other noble Lords. I know, but we do have concerns. The Bill should extend as far as the public should extend as far as the public would expect, be fully and straightforwardly enforceable.

Be not only reactive, but proactive. We look forward to working with the Minister whom I welcome to his new position. And I'd also at this point like to thank the noble Lady Baroness Levitt for all I know she must have done in the preparation of this Bill. Ethical conduct candour should not need saying, but clearly from the catalogue of disasters, not only. What has lent the Bill its informal title, it does. I echo the admiration expressed, and which will be expressed for the determination and sheer grit of the survivors of those disasters, their families and campaigners.

I'm glad to see the Nolan Principles embedded, and as we go through the bill, we might test each provision. In a way, it's a pity it's not left at that. The more is spelled out, the more significant is what is not. The bill tells us what in particular a public authority must do. Lists are not exhaustive. But leaving aside the technicalities of drafting, they will be the focus and so must be complete to fulfil the purpose in clause one, enabling whistleblowing and safety is essential.

Otherwise, candour is muzzled and the duty incomplete. It needs to prevent problems. A comprehensive whistleblowing policy, including a duty to investigate concerns, should not be optional. So often we hear from victims. No one in future should have to experience this. They and the campaigners working alongside them, and over such long periods, as I say, are to be congratulated. What a powerful phrase is the right Reverend James Jones? The patronising disposition of unaccountable power so apt for the feeling of impotence so many have had to battle.

I would be grateful if the Minister could explain the involvement of the new regime. Landscape might be a better term of the independent public advocate. Gov.uk prefaces the policy statement regarding the IPA with the explanation. It was published

17:00

Lord Beamish (Labour)

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under the 2024 to 2026 Starmer Labour government. Is that some Labour government. Is that some sort of disclaimer or distancing? I sort of disclaimer or distancing? I have seen it elsewhere, she, the IPA, should be fully involved and adequately resourced to fulfil her role, which is complementary to role, which is complementary to what the bill introduces. The scope, in the non-technical sense of the bill must reflect the realities. Public authorities don't do everything themselves. They use subcontractors who use sub subcontractors and so on.

There are agency workers, too. It's not just a chain, it's a web. The government has said that it would not be proportionate to subject all such bodies to the duty to adopt, adopt a code of ethical conduct. The appropriate national authority will target relevant sectors. We need to unpack that and perhaps rebuild it. That responsibility must land appropriately. That responsibility must land appropriately. It's been highlighted by the recent report that the manufacturer of the cladding of Grenfell Tower has, in settling an action by its shareholders, paid them very considerably more than they paid to the families of those who died.

That may not be directly relevant to the bill, but I wanted to say it and to say that the whole state needs to play its part, whether or not it's a matter of candour. As we were reminded by headlines at the weekend, former postmasters and their families are still being frustrated in their efforts to overturn convictions and get proper compensation. Of course, we want to prevent the need for compensation. What is directly relevant is what public authorities are required to do to maintain high standards of conduct.

We want to see mandatory guidance on compliance with the code and mandatory regulation requiring compliance with standards. I was struck by the CQC experience. They refer to differences in the quality of the duty of candour in services rated outstanding and good, compared with lower gradings. Ethical standards are integral to successful services. National security will occupy some of our time. The Minister told the Commons that arrangements for some enquiries remain available and existing practices, such as the use of security vetted counsel can continue.

I have to say I've never felt entirely comfortable with arrangements for special advocates like their clients, they must rarely feel entirely satisfied with what they can achieve, given the constraints of closed material procedure. I'm with Lord Bingham that their task is like taking blind shots at a hidden target, but I suppose there is no perfect solution. With the end of the legislation in sight, the focus will be implementation. If that's not effective, the rest is in vain. So the House won't be surprised that we are concerned about legal aid, not only resources and rates, but the capacity of the profession and the detail of a scheme which does not recognise the complexity, for instance, of the work entailed in an inquest and the amount of work required outside the hearing itself.

Many of our points on the duty of candour are also relevant to the misconduct in public office provisions. Inevitably, because this is also about ethics and accountability. Who is a public office holder? What about private contractors marrying up the duty

17:08

Baroness May of Maidenhead (Conservative)

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with regulation? The reasonable excuse defence takes us into the territory of the reverse burden of territory of the reverse burden of proof, making the defence clearer and not setting an exceptionally high burden for the prosecution. high burden for the prosecution. I'm persuaded that the Bill should align with the Bribery Act, that someone who is not a public someone who is not a public official but investigates misconduct should be covered, and that the offence should not be that the offence should not be dependent on a benefit having actually been obtained.

This should be about prevention. Finally, to provide for parity at inquiries, including inquests, is a logical application of the underlying thinking. We must ensure that the reality achieves the objectives. We all have an interest in a duty of candour. Its application is relevant to me for a particular reason, and this is rather indulgent, I may say. I have a private member's bill. It's had its Second Reading, so I suppose it's now the property of the House, which deals with the conduct of undercover police and intelligence operatives, operatives listening to some of the women deceived into relationships by Spycops has given me some insight into the institutional defensiveness and the layers of issues and ranks of people who have not been governed by ethics.

It's a reminder that when something goes wrong, prevaricating or denying it compounds the damage, and that damage can be so corrosive. My noble friend Lord Marks has not signed off this speech. He'll have plenty to say. And more cogently, in the next stages. Well done to.

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My Lords. Like others who are going to speak in this debate, I start with acknowledging the pain

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start with acknowledging the pain of the victims whose grief and distress was. Compounded by the failure of the

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Compounded by the failure of the state. And that's why we're here. This legislation, as Lord Keen mentioned, has had a long and mentioned, has had a long and difficult gestation, partly caused by the difficulty, in some cases, by the difficulty, in some cases, of how to maintain a duty of candour alongside a duty of confidentiality and to maintain secrets. I wish to make three points, and I'm afraid that the first one is pretty obvious, but there's been an awful lot of ill informed commentary on this, and I can't avoid it.

As you would expect, my main concern is that national security is not damaged. There's two aspects to this. First, the vulnerability of intelligence, which can be destroyed by slight references to it. I'm going to be rather vain and quote from a speech I made in the robing Room in 2010 here, excuse me doing so, but in a moment I'm going to quote Lord Butler. So somebody of greater authority intelligence is vulnerable individuals supplying it can be exposed, interrogated and killed.

Our duty is to protect them. Operations can be compromised. Techniques blown, ciphers changed the targets of intelligence. Learn and improve their own techniques to conceal their action from the authorities. This means that intelligence must be protected and safeguarded, which is why systems have been developed so that

17:15

Lord Blunkett (Labour)

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intelligence can be safely used in court cases and in public inquiries, including with special advocates including with special advocates who I think have been very successful in such a way that the material can be germane to the conclusions of the court case or the inquiry. But the most sensitive the inquiry. But the most sensitive aspects of it protected. So we have closed material sessions, public interest, immunity certificates, interest, immunity certificates, special advocates and the ability to request that an inquiry becomes statutory, which gives it those protections.

And the British intelligence community has lots of experience of that. But there's also a second point on intelligence, which I think is often overlooked. And here copyright of Lord Butler and his report into the weapons of mass destruction. In 2004. I really think this is important because it partly explains the way the act is drafted so that individual members of the services intelligence community do not report externally, but it goes through the head of the service. The most important limitation on intelligence is its incompleteness.

Much ingenuity and effort is spent making secret intelligence difficult to acquire and hard to analyse. Although the intelligence process may overcome such barriers, intelligence seldom acquires the full story. In fact, it's often patchy and sporadic, and even after an analysis may be at best, inferential. What that means is that much is not only is only clear with hindsight, but challenging decisions on where to focus. Resources are standard and that even the most knowledgeable intelligence officers and analysts may reach very different conclusions on the same material.

There is also, of course, the practice of need to know to protect again internally material so that not everybody has the full picture. So I believe that the safety mechanisms in the bill for that area of our work, as it stands at the moment are adequate. The second thing I want to talk about is ethics, and I applaud what my noble friend Lord Evans of Weardale said in the debate, which Lord Alton triggered earlier in the year on this subject, the Nolan Principles and I used to remember them off by heart.

I can usually get to. Six of them are still pretty good. They date from 1995. They're not complete. There's nothing about how you behave towards other people, but still very important principles, which I grew up on from 1995 onwards, and I strongly support the view in the bill that all public authorities should promote and actively maintain ethical standards, articulating what they are. Now, of

17:21

Baroness Ludford (Liberal Democrat)

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course, intelligence work, as many other work raises ethical issues. There's very little in government There's very little in government that doesn't. But we sought to maintain ethical standards. We certainly articulated them. Sometimes we fell short, as Sometimes we fell short, as organisations do. When I was there, we appointed an ethics counsellor. we appointed an ethics counsellor. We had ethics built in to discussions on operations. But if that wasn't sufficient, staff could raise issues with the ethics counsellor who still exists.

The appointment still exists and if it were, the issues raised, would be brought to the board and considered. This is particularly important in an organisation which, within the law, has the powers to intrude into people's privacy and do some quite interesting things. The final point I want to make of my three points is there are no extra resources to do this, so that frontline work staff will be taken off current work to service these demands to service, if you like, the past, rather than preventing the future.

And that's a real concern to me. I am, though, pleased by the involvement of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It's sometimes assumed that this was imposed on the Intelligence Committee. I look at Lord Beamish, who leads it at the moment. In fact, it was sought by my service for many years before we got it. And I see Lord Butler nodding because we valued the idea of parliamentary scrutiny of what we were doing. I think the office of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner being involved is also important.

And finally, I'd like to thank Lord Lemos, who rang me in a red stripy t shirt in the middle of August on the hottest day and spent a good time. I was equally smart to dress up talking about the bill and what it's trying to do, and if I'm ending on a flippant note, I don't mean to suggest that this isn't a very important and significant bit of intelligence, a bit of

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legislation, and I look forward to engagement at all subsequent stages of the bill. Yes.

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Yes. My Lords, I declare my interest as co-chair of the Ethics Committee of the National Police Chiefs Council. I heartily welcome this bill. I've spoken in this House on previous occasions regarding the need for a wide duty of candour. need for a wide duty of candour. I'm delighted that we are now making substantial progress and Lord Oates the role of public Lord Oates the role of public officials is and always must be one of stewardship, not dominance. To remain effective.

This relationship demands the ongoing consent of the people, and that's only possible through honesty, transparency and the means for communities to get to the truth. When things do go wrong, it necessitates a higher standard of conduct for those authorities who wield greater powers and capabilities. It requires resources to level the playing field. When victims want to seek justice. This relationship is a fragile one, but it must be carefully maintained if public authorities are to retain the respect and trust of the people they serve.

Introduction of a statutory duty of candour and transparency will be an important step towards strengthening this relationship and empowering the people to hold officials accountable when that trust is broken. As a young priest and industrial chaplain in Rotherham, I was deployed to the Hillsborough Stadium and the clergy who had been present at the match were stood down. The sight of the thick metal crush barriers at the Leppings Lane end, twisted out of shape by the sheer weight of human flesh and bone pressing down on them, still haunts me.

Almost four decades on, the bereaved families I met with at

17:28

Lord Wills (Labour)

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the stadium were desperate to know why it was that their loved ones had perished. I could listen to had perished. I could listen to their concerns. I could and did offer my partial support, but I had no answers to their questions as to no answers to their questions as to how the tragedy could have happened. In contrast to the welcome my colleagues and I received at the stadium when I offered a few days later my services at the local police station, knowing that many police station, knowing that many officers would have been present and traumatised, I was told bluntly that outsiders were not welcome at itself, told a story almost immediately.

For years to come, supporters were blamed for the tragedy, accused of drunkenness and arriving intentionally late and without tickets. It was across this backdrop a deflected blame. The families of the victims bore responsibility to campaign for the truth of what happened that day process, which took them many decades and came at enormous emotional and financial cost and Lord Dobbs the vulnerable and the grieving should never carry the weight of securing accountability on their own. Nor should the burden of proof fall on the bereaved at a time of such great loss.

We all, in this House and far beyond, owe a great debt of gratitude to my Right reverend friend Bishop James Jones, who has already been mentioned. Former member of this House. He worked long and hard, including facing down severe political pressure in order to complete and present his report to Hillsborough. It nearly didn't happen. He was nearly stopped drawing on his conclusions. I strongly support the commitment to assign additional public expenditure to legal aid for bereaved family members, ensuring equal and fair participation in the course of justice.

Of course, in my own diocese we have, in my time as bishop, witnessed another profound tragedy in the arena attack. The circumstances were very different, but it demonstrated the same important principle that bereaved families and those injured and maimed physically and psychologically deserve access to the truth, and that transparency and accountability are essential for victims to seek true justice in Manchester, after initial, locally commissioned inquiry had been substantially thwarted by a failure of candour, a second statutory inquiry was established.

It examined security failures, emergency response shortcomings, lessons for the future. Families were active participants in the inquiry, and many other lessons it established were drawn directly from their experiences. Nothing, my Lords can erase the suffering that victims and their families experienced that day in the years that followed, but I believe we eventually reached a point where the protection of the public and the needs of the bereaved and injured were no longer consistently left. Playing second fiddle to the reputation of public authorities.

I hope that the introduction of a legal duty to assist in such investigations may enable victims and families to get real answers, get answers they can trust, and get them far more quickly than in the past. By a quirk of history. Previously to that time in Rotherham, I was serving close by the Orgreave coking plant. At the time of the 198586 miners strike. Many miners were my parishioners. That incident predates Hillsborough, but it's taken until the last few months for a much needed inquiry to be set up by Right reverend friend, the Lord Bishop of Sheffield, who was unable to be in his place today, is chairing that inquiry.

I pray, and I mean that I pray that even before this current bill is enacted, all those who are called to give evidence before him will operate within the spirit of candour for which this bill now seeks to make statutory provision. As the Bill moves forward. There are a couple of matters of detail which I'll be seeking to follow. I'm keen to see how we properly protect public sector whistleblowers. All too often, those who first draw attention to wrongdoing pay a heavy personal price, their careers wrecked.

Secondly, I hope we can maintain the application of the duty of candour to private sector bodies that are contracted to provide services on behalf of a public body, all the way down the sometimes lengthy subcontracting chain. This duty must not be amended in your Lordships House in ways that would incentivise incentivise the outsourcing of functions in order to get around the aims and purposes of the Bill. We hear a lot. In times of great tragedy, communities are held together through trust, dignity and

17:37

Lord Howard of Lympne (Conservative)

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mutual care. We found that in Manchester in 2017. We all have a responsibility to care for one responsibility to care for one another, to seek out justice and to rebuild the public, officers and rebuild the public, officers and citizens alike. That when authority figures are not held properly accountable and denial and accountable and denial and defensiveness are enabled, our communities are further fragmented. The mutual respect that binds our communities can only be maintained through transparency, accountability and ongoing public scrutiny.

This bill will, I believe, go a long way towards strengthening the principles of moral leadership and trust that empower our public officers to effectively serve the people. Once we have given it, as we must, our thorough consideration. I pray that it will be enacted and all its provisions commenced as swiftly as possible.

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I begin my speech today with one thought in my mind, and that's. Of thought in my mind, and that's. Of the 97 individuals who lost their life on the 15th of April, 1989 at Hillsborough, and obviously their Hillsborough, and obviously their families and friends. It's through those family and friends, tenacious those family and friends, tenacious campaign that we're here today. What occurred on April 15th, 1989 was a shameful saga. It's something that stains our nation and the state, and various parts of it colluded to cover up the truth and worse, blamed the victims of this tragedy for the events that clearly added grief to the already grieving families, not only immediately, but over many years.

It is, I think, a, as I say, a tribute to them. And they've never given up to get the truth that we're here today with this bill. And let's hope that this bill becomes a living legacy for the victims of that tragedy. So I think it is beholden to, yes, scrutinise this bill in detail, but actually make sure we get it on the statute books as quickly as possible. Now, if the Hillsborough

17:42

Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Labour)

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events at Hillsborough in 1989 were events at Hillsborough in 1989 were bad enough. That would be a very serious and serious issue. But it's not. There have been countless not. There have been countless events where cover ups by the state events where cover ups by the state have led not only to victims not getting justice, but actually having to fight for many years. And I've been involved in one of those. I've been involved in one of those. And my good friend Lord Arbuthnot, and that's the justice for subpostmasters.

The last 15 years, we've been working to expose, help expose the truth around the Post Office Horizon scandal. Now, like the the Hillsborough families, victims of that scandal were lied to, things were covered up. Decent individual, hard working individuals not only lost their livelihoods but went to prison. 13 tragically took their own life, including Martin Griffiths, who stepped in front of a bus and was highlighted in the ITV drama documentary. But added to that has been the mental trauma not only of the families but of children of those affected, and I'm very pleased the government are now recognising that in terms of providing compensation to them now, it would be bad enough if, as I say, this was the only tragedy.

It's not. The Post Office scandal has been called one of the miscarriages, the biggest miscarriage of justice in this country. And it is the state, the Post Office lied, the state lied, the government hid behind the fact the Post Office was a arm's length entity to not be able to put forward the truth. They spent £100 million of taxpayers money to defend the indefensible. When the postmasters took them to court. Now that led obviously, to the truth finally coming out.

But I'm sure Lord Arbuthnot in his contribution, will say over the years the facts were there. We were just lied to. Parliament was lied to, and therefore I welcome this bill in hopefully shedding some light and changing the culture, which is not just about individual institutions, but it's across the public sector. Now in the Post Office case. Duty of candour, she thought once the scandal broke after the court case, that post would be forthcoming. No they didn't. It took them another three years to admit, and it was for myself and others who campaigned to highlight it, that there was a previous system to horizon called capture.

And we're still fighting for justice for those individuals. The government has provided compensation, but 27 are still facing the fact that they're waiting for their convictions to be overturned through the Criminal Cases Review body. And I would urge the government to actually to follow the last government's approach it did on horizon on those. So should this bill be needed? No, it shouldn't. If we're actually in an open and honest situation. But it's not. We've got situations here where the state and various parts of it is a cultural issue have come together to deny not only the truth, but in all occasions lie and cover its tracks.

Now, I would like to turn to the point around the security services as chair of the ISC and as Baroness Manningham-Buller said, we have been very closely involved in this bill and Lord Keen said, why has it taken so long? Well, it's taken so

17:49

Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench)

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long because it's been very it's been very important to get it right. been very important to get it right. Can I just echo. Baroness Manningham-Buller point about the Manningham-Buller point about the fact that the security services, in terms of the procedures that are in place at the moment, are content place at the moment, are content that that will protect those those agents. And the important point is agents. And the important point is it's not the individual agents that will have to adjudicate.

It will be the agency heads. And having spent many hours not only with the committee, but also myself and the Deputy Chair, in terms of discussions with the agency heads and the families. I think we've come to a point now where we can recognise that it does cover the the agencies, but it also puts in place very clear safeguards that are already there, actually, to ensure that the secrets which the noble Lady referred to are protected. So I think from an IFC's point of view, we are content, as the bill stands at the moment, that there are protections, enough protections in place to cover our security services.

I think the last point I would like to make, and I made I mention the word culture. It does need to change. And I don't think, to be honest, that this is the end. What we need also, I think, is to look at the inquiry's issue. It takes far too long for victims to get justice. Compensation has to be reinvented every time. And I know that Professor Christopher Hodges, who's the chair of the Horizon Compensation Board, has been doing some work with government to look at whether we need a beefed up ombudsman system with parliamentary oversight to ensure that inquiries don't go on and victims get justice quicker than they, far more quicker than they should.

So in closing, can I just say that this bill is important, and let's hope that from the tragic events of 1989, some good comes from it.

**** Possible New Speaker ****

My Lords, the noble Lord, the Minister reminded us that, sadly, there have over the years been all there have over the years been all too many examples of the abuse of state power when those in public state power when those in public service have decided to act in a way that serves their institution, way that serves their institution, or indeed themselves, rather than the public, that they are there to serve. But despite all those many examples, we must never forget, as other speakers have already referred to, that the origin of this legislation lies on the pitch.

At Hillsborough on the 15th of April, 1989, and we owe it to the 97 who died and their families, who have campaigned for so many decades to make sure that we get this bill right and that it will work. There has been a focus in some of the commentary on the issues of inquiries and investigations, but of course, the lies, the manipulation of the facts, the misinformation that Hillsborough didn't start at the inquest or at the independent panel.

It started on and off the pitch on the day on April the 15th, 1989. And that's why the wider issue of the duty of candour is so important, as is the aspect of the new legislation the government's introducing on misconduct in public office. So getting that right really matters for all those who've been affected by these abuses of state power over the years. There are two particular

17:57

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

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aspects of the bill that I want to focus on. The first is the protected information that has been protected information that has been mentioned by the noble Lord Lord Beamish, by the noble Lady Baroness Manningham-Buller, both with Manningham-Buller, both with significant experience in this area. significant experience in this area. And I recognise that this is a conundrum. There is a need to ensure that people can get to the truth, while at the same time protecting our national security interests.

And there has been much debate about this, and I recognise that the term of adequacy of the section of the bill has been. And the iscs from the noble Lord Lord Beamish view that this is appropriate in terms of the bill. If I may just say to the Minister, I'm very grateful to him and his officials for meeting with me and my noble friend the Baroness Sanderson of Welton, last week, and we were able to discuss some of these issues. But I do fear that this section of the bill, clause six, is rather cumbersome, and the more cumbersome a section, a piece of legislation is, the more opportunity there is for mistakes to be made and for unintended consequences.

And the more cumbersome, the more resources will be required. And I don't know whether the government has made any attempt to consider what the resource implications of the. For the relevant public authorities of this aspect of the Bill could be. But it is important that we ensure not just that we get to the truth and that people who are affected by abuses of the state are able to get to that truth, but also that intelligence and information that is necessary to keep us all safe can circulate, can be there within and into the relevant public authorities, our security services, and others who deal with national security issues.

Reference was made by the noble Lady Baroness Manningham-Buller to the Special Advocates. I think they have worked extremely well. I think that is a very good example of ways in which these two issues of national security and getting to the truth can be met, and that that can ensure that we meet those two objectives. So I look forward to debate further debate on this aspect and just probing aspects such as in in clause six, subclause eight, subsection eight, what happens if an application is made and rejected? The bill is silent on this, but the Minister may wish at some stage to respond on that particular point.

But there is one aspect of this bill which I'm very sad about. It is that the independent public advocate is not referred to in this bill. The noble Lady, the Baroness Hamwee, has already referred to the IPA. In an ideal situation, there will be circumstances where it will not be necessary to move to a public inquiry where, if the independent public advocate can be working with the families who are affected by a t to the truth at an early stage and they.

And there will be no need to move to an inquiry. One of the complaints that I heard long and hard from the Hillsborough families at a very early stage in my time as Home Secretary, was that there was nobody there for them, nobody there on their side. The independent public advocate is the person who will be on their side, who will be their voice, who will be

18:04

Lord Bichard (Crossbench)

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campaigning for them, who will be working to knock down the barriers of bureaucracy that the state puts of bureaucracy that the state puts in place to try to stop the truth from coming out. And I believe that if we are going to look at this in if we are going to look at this in holistically, we need to ensure that the independent public advocate is referenced in this bill. advocate is referenced in this bill. And indeed, as the noble Lady Baroness Hamwee has said, the resources available to the resources available to the independent public advocate, whether they're part time or full time, these are also issues that need to be addressed.

But the IPA is part of this picture and should be within this bill as part of this picture, because together, this bill and the IPA could mean that in the future, no one affected by abuses of the state, by mistakes of the state should wait decades for the truth that no one will feel that they are on their own in fighting for the truth, and above all, that the state will be on the

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side of the public that they serve in. It's my privilege to.

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It's my privilege to. Follow the noble Lady and to commend the part she played as Home Secretary and as Prime Minister, and in listening to the families, I hope the House will forgive me for hope the House will forgive me for reiterating words that have already been used this afternoon, but I've been reflecting personally over the last year or two about the 1989 disaster and whether I could have done a great deal more afterwards as the member of Parliament, whose constituency, the Hillsborough Stadium, is located, I think the commendations that have already been made to the families and campaigners who've shown the most incredible tenacity and commitment to bringing about change, needs to be reiterated because making democracy work when you are suffering as they have suffered, with the emotion that they have felt, has been the most impressive and yet tragic element of modern British democracy.

I was not at the game I was in very new MP for the area. It was a semi-final, but my father in law to be was there and to his death he remembered it as though it was yesterday. My wife to be was a volunteer at the Sheffield Hallam Hospital as a doctor, and I went to the Northern General Hospital and spoke to some of the 766 young men and women who were injured on that day. We were briefed by the police, entirely wrongly.

To this day, I'm grateful that for once I didn't believe the police, other members of Parliament did. The lies that were told on that day are a stain on the South Yorkshire Police and the force in general, but they do not need to be a stain on the community. I was proud to represent, and I'm saying it because out of that terrible day and the immediate aftermath, the humanity and commitment of local people is something that also needs to be remembered.

People who run

18:11

Baroness Levitt (Labour)

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people from Merseyside back to their homes because cars were not usable, and the tragedy that brought such emotional trauma, people who'd lost their keys, people who'd lost their keys, people who those days didn't have a mobile phone and had to use local mobile phone and had to use local landlines. I only say it because sometimes we need to balance the terrible things with the humanity that also emerges. I want to pay tribute to my friend Lord Wills, who was speaking a moment, because here in this house, when I was a very new member of this House, he brought forward his private member's bill and I was pleased to be a sponsor.

But as I said a moment ago, I've reflected on how little I did as Home Secretary. And I regret that deeply because the time that it's taken to bring about this bill and the recognition that goes with it, could have been shortened enormously if some of us had taken more responsibility at that time. Two prime Ministers now have played their part. The current Prime Minister, my friend, paid tribute to Sir Keir Starmer in the Commons earlier this afternoon, and I pay tribute to Andy Burnham.

He learnt a terrific political lesson on the 20th anniversary in 2009 at Anfield. Some of us have learnt lessons like that over the years and it's seminal. I just want to

18:14

Baroness Benjamin (Liberal Democrat)

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say 2 or 3 things about the bill. Firstly, Baroness Hamwee and Baroness May have mentioned the Independent Public Advocate. Unless and I know she's here this and I know she's here this afternoon, unless this role is properly funded and supported, unless the powers are adequate, it unless the powers are adequate, it won't work because, as Baroness May said, this is not about taking said, this is not about taking things to yet another public inquiry. It's about getting to the truth quickly and decisively and bringing justice in that way.

Secondly, the security services which have been mentioned already this afternoon as Home Secretary, I was painfully aware of the sacrifice that many people made, the danger in which they put themselves. So getting this right will be important in terms of ensuring that they can't escape from actions that are totally unethical. But we do it in a way that is safeguarding our national well-being. I also want to say that this afternoon that this isn't about legislation itself.

This is about getting people to act ethically, not to be dealt with by legislative process. The Right Reverend, the Bishop of Manchester mentioned not only is early time and his terrible experience in South Yorkshire all those years ago, which I've spoken about, but also the work he's doing with the National Police Chiefs Council, Lord, Lord Herbert and myself were painfully aware in the nine month inquiry we undertook into the leadership of the police service in Britain, that there is a desperate need for the ethics to be built into everyday life.

I say to my good friend Baroness Manningham-Buller, there will be a cost, but the cost will be much less if people themselves take responsibility and act not just with humanity, but with the ethics that ensure that those around them aren't permitted to act fraudulently and against the best interests of the community. And finally, I'd like to ask my noble friend from the front bench, will he make sure that in perhaps reopening the stages of the Nottingham Foundation Trust inquiry, people are made to give evidence rather than escaping by having

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taken other jobs? Thank you. My Lords. I start. With apologies.

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With apologies. For the fact that I might be commuting a bit between the Chamber and Grand Committee because of my and Grand Committee because of my involvement also in the cybersecurity bill. I very much welcome this bill and profoundly welcome this bill and profoundly thank the campaigners, survivors and bereaved families from Hillsborough. Grenfell Post Office Hillsborough. Grenfell Post Office Horizon, infected Blood, Windrush nuclear testing, LGB personnel in the armed forces, grooming gangs, pelvic mesh and other scandals. Such a long list and long processes.

It. One does wonder, is the British state uniquely bad at preventing and righting injustices? The vow is never again. However, I will, at the end of my remarks, raise fears about other areas where I fear similar issues might be arising, even if not yet generally recognised as scandals. I do worry that the bill puts the chicken before the egg. Part one and part two arguably need to be reversed so

18:22

Lord Roe of West Wickham (Labour)

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that the obligation of ethical conduct comes first. If ethical conduct could be embedded, many conduct could be embedded, many scandals and inquiries with their suffering, heartache and expense could be avoided. It is bad enough for people to suffer wrongful actions and miscarriages of justice, actions and miscarriages of justice, but even worse that these became examples of institutional defensiveness, denial, obfuscation, delay. And, as both the present and previous prime Ministers have said, cover ups. I would like to remind those, such as on the benches to my right, who oppose the ECHR and are even excluding candidates from their party who are sensible on this issue, that it was because of the operation of the European Convention and Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act, that inquests were reformed and justice done for Hillsborough victims and others.

This powerfully demonstrates how human rights can improve the lives of ordinary people. But as my colleague in the Other place, Jess Brown Fuller put it, the path to truth was blocked by people in positions of power and trust, victims of miscarriages of justice want the truth, even if they have to wait a long time for it, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said last week. In relation to Greenland, women who had had contraceptive devices inserted without consent. I believe it is never too late to do the right thing.

Justice is something people do want alongside truth and accountability. As Labour MP Ian Byrne pointed out in The Other Place, by 2020, 31 years after Hillsborough, no public servant had been convicted and no police officer disciplined. In fact, Norman Bettison, who was absolutely central to the cover up, not only escaped sanction but was rewarded with a knighthood for his efforts, a title he disgracefully retains to this day. So yes, we got the truth. But justice? No. So we do need individual accountability and liability for senior people.

Other colleagues will raise issues such as whistleblowing protections and parity of legal representation. So I will spend the rest of my time mentioning some of the other areas of policy and practice where I fear scandals are brewing. These include the treatment of leaseholders, whether over works to address fire risks post Grenfell, or rip off service charges from tax haven based freehold owners and rapacious managing agents. Then I fear that so-called gender affirming care may end up as an NHS scandal like infected blood.

Journalist Nick Wallace, who did a lot of work on Post Office Horizon scandal, wrote in the Sunday Times at the weekend in the wake of NHS Wales designating the Welsh Gender Service a potential service of concern. And he described the NHS enthusiasm, enthusiasm for gender ideology as a form of medical malpractice, saying when the growing number of people who feel they have been ruined by gender surgery begin to find their voices will see more legal claims against the NHS and the individual doctors responsible.

Only then will the true horrors of this industry be exposed. I also believe that employers and service providers, which refuse to provide single sex facilities under the Equality Act, as confirmed by the Supreme Court, might in future be exposed to accountability and liability for knowingly and deliberately flouting the law in regard to sentences of imprisonment for public protection, I said in debates on the sentencing bill, this is not a technical issue. It is an ethical issue, and we are all begging the Minister to deliver

18:29

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Conservative)

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the justice that has been called for from all sides of the House this afternoon. So I very much welcome the announcement by the Prime Minister and I believe the Justice Secretary, whether he's Justice Secretary, whether he's done it or not, yet anticipating legislation to end these sentences legislation to end these sentences by the end of this Parliament, the by the end of this Parliament, the CEO of the NGO, UN United Group for reform of IPP, Mark Conway, reacted. Legislation alone cannot undo 20 years of damage, but it is the essential first step towards healing and an editorial in The Independent, whose reporter has done sterling work raising awareness of the injustice of IPP sentences, said assuming there's no inquiry into how this regime was allowed to continue despite known flaws, there needs now to be at least some accountability on the part of those concerned the Ministers, civil servants, lawyers.

Why did they tolerate this for so long? Finally, I would like to refer to the case of two former senior judges who are colleagues of ours in this House and were retired from judicial service in this country. Continue to sit on Hong Kong's Court of Final appeal, as highlighted in the times today. Their presence once reinforced constitutionalism and human rights. But now that China has reshaped the legal system in Hong Kong to serve the Chinese Communist Party, with 1900 political prisoners jailed, I would contend that their continued service legitimises repression, including a British citizen, Jimmy Lai, whose appeal with six other pro-democracy activists against convictions for taking part in peaceful protest, was dismissed by that court in 2024, when the noble Lord, Lord Sumption, left the Hong Kong court two years ago, he warned that the territory was slowly becoming a totalitarian state.

I understand that it can only be a personal decision of the noble Lords concerned, because there may be nothing in law in the rules of this House, or indeed in this Bill, to prevent them from continuing to sit on the Hong Kong Court of Final appeal. I nonetheless hope that the principles of this welcome bill might reverberate beyond its strict scope and including, in this case.

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The Minister made the case for this important bill eloquently, and much of what I'm about to say has much of what I'm about to say has already been said by some of the compelling speeches your Lordships compelling speeches your Lordships have already heard today. The bill has these two key objectives of creating a duty of candour creating a duty of candour throughout the public service, and then creating a parity of arms and legal representation between the legal representation between the bereaved and victims and the state.

My Lords, I'm wholly in favour of these objectives, but I worry that this Bill, as it now stands, will not deliver them. And above all, I'm not sure that it will deliver what must always be the overriding objective when one of these terrible disasters happens. And that is, always keep the interests of victims and the bereaved front and centre in the aftermath of any such disaster. And I suggest those interests can be summarised as finding the truth about what happened and why, finding it quickly, and then for accountability to follow without delay and without that.

It's very hard from the victims and the bereaved to find any kind of closure after suffering such

18:37

Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Labour)

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terrible losses. All of this was denied for so very long for the denied for so very long for the Hillsborough families and so many other victims of public disasters. Now, my Lords, the duty of candour Now, my Lords, the duty of candour aims to transform the culture of cover up that's characterised the aftermath of public disasters such aftermath of public disasters such as Hillsborough, but transforming the culture of public organisations the culture of public organisations is notoriously difficult, and this is particularly going to be the case when those in such organisations might feel they're in the frame for allowing these disasters to happen.

So how confident can my noble friend the Minister, be that this Bill will succeed in transforming that culture when previous attempts have failed? And if any such confidence turns out to be misplaced, what action will the government take to rectify any defects in the Bill that may become apparent now? My noble friend, the Minister should also be aware that I've been contacted by some of the bereaved at Hillsborough with their concerns about the details of how the duty of candour will be implemented.

They told me that they tried to raise these concerns with the government but were ignored, so I'd be grateful if the Minister could reassure me that the government will engage more positively with any amendments I put down to try and address those concerns. Now, the problems with the parity of arms provision are less hypothetical. They start with its funding a disaster like Hillsborough or Grenfell in recent disasters in the NHS could end up with scores of lawyers on legal aid. As far as I'm aware, the government

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only hopes this won't Happen, but they've given no guarantees that it won't. Now, guarantees that it won't. Now, however, many lawyers turn up, the cost will run probably into cost will run probably into hundreds of millions of pounds and have to be found from departmental budgets already significantly budgets already significantly strained and apparently going to be facing further cuts in the near. Then there's the issue of who exactly will receive representation in an effort to restrain costs. The government appears to have decided that only one person in a kinship group will receive legal aid for representation, and that will be the first one who applies.

So what would happen in the case, for example, of a divorced couple with a mother, raised a daughter and the feckless father disappeared. The daughter goes with her mother to an event, and there's one of these terrible disasters, and the daughter is killed. The mother is in a coma in intensive care. Feckless father suddenly appears, seeking legal representation with an eye on compensation down the line. He gets the legal aid, not the mother. The blameless mother in a coma. As I understand the provisions as they now stand.

So

18:42

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (Crossbench)

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I'd ask the Minister to consider what will be the response from that bereaved mother, not to mention the bereaved mother, not to mention the media and the general public. How, they might well ask, would that square with the rhetoric of not one Prime Minister but two prime Ministers? Then there's the issue of whether so many lawyers are only going to protract the proceedings going to protract the proceedings of public inquiries even longer than they already take. And my noble friend Lord Beamish made that noble friend Lord Beamish made that point cogently already.

What reassurances can the Minister give that that will not be the case. Then there's the question of the whether the legal profession has the capacity to cope with the demands placed on it by this Bill. Many noble Lords will have received a briefing from the Law Society which sets out that point in detail. However, I wouldn't want the Minister to think that I'm only offering criticisms of this important bill. I'd like to conclude by offering two proposals that might at least mitigate the potentially adverse consequences of it.

To mitigate the difficulties in affecting cultural change in the duty of candour, wants to engineer, there needs to be greater protections for whistleblowers, and that point has already been made. Imagine if there had been just one whistleblower who felt sufficiently empowered and protected to blow the whistle on what was happening in the South Yorkshire Police on the day after the Hillsborough disaster, and for years and years after that. There must have been at least one person in that force who hated what they saw being done.

And yet, if one person had blown the whistle, those Hillsborough families might have been spared not years, but decades of grief and trauma. So I very much hope. I'm sure there will be loads of amendments put down to try and produce better amendments, protections for whistleblowers. I very much hope the government will now engage positively with them and try and make some progress on this. Now, finally, the bill aims to tackle failures in process. Now, that's admirable. And but it does not address, except indirectly, the question of giving greater agency to the victims and bereaved.

That was the purpose of my two private members. Bill trying to set up the Independent Public Advocate, which was eventually established. We've now got someone absolutely suited

18:46

Baroness Chakrabarti (Labour)

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to the job in post. Now, and I would be grateful if the Minister would be grateful if the Minister could explain exactly why the government refused to use the government refused to use the opportunity of this bill to increase the powers of the independent public advocate, to independent public advocate, to give greater agency to those bereaved in these disasters. The value of giving such agency is value of giving such agency is demonstrated by the Hillsborough Family Support Group, and we've already heard all the justified tributes that have been paid to their indomitable work over decades.

And I want to just make the point again, because I don't think it can be made too often. This bill owes relatively little to all the efforts of politicians and lawyers, and so very much to the way that group campaigned with such persistence over decades and with such dignity, still, having suffered such terrible losses. That was what drove me to writing, setting up the Hillsborough independent panel that finally got to the truth of what happened. And that is what eventually led to this bill.

Now, I hope the government will recognise the advantages of giving the bereaved agency. If the Hillsborough Family Support Group could be replicated for significant members of the victims, so they could act collectively, that would deal with some of the problems. Of course. So we know that Trevor Hicks, the first chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, and Jenny Hicks, who was 30 years working on the committee of that group, will help the independent public advocate work out ways of setting up similar collective endeavours in future.

And I very much hope that the government will now build on the legacy those families have already laid by giving greater agency in the future to those who lose loved ones in future, and recognise that funding

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legions of lawyers isn't the only way forward. Michael.

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Michael. My Lords, I have. I've never been able to find the words to been able to find the words to describe the calamitous events which took place at Hillsborough on which took place at Hillsborough on the 15th of April, 1989, and I join with others in expressing, as I had previously done, my deepest sympathy with the families of those who lost their lives on that terrible day. I intervene in this debate to support the principle of the legislation, which is before your Lordships, and to explain some of the difficulties which Ministers face when our institutions, institutions in which, for the most part we take great pride, fail to deliver justice.

At the inquest the

18:52

Lord Redwood (Conservative)

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coroner controversially and wrongly excluded all evidence into what excluded all evidence into what happened after 3:15 p.m. on the day happened after 3:15 p.m. on the day of the t accidental death were returned. The accidental death were returned. The outcome of that inquest was challenged by way of judicial challenged by way of judicial review, but the court upheld the verdict of the inquest and specifically held that the cut off point imposed by the coroner was not unreasonable.

The families of the victims, as we've heard with incredible and sustained determination, continued to press for a public inquiry. And it was against that background that, as Home Secretary, I replied to an adjournment debate in the House of Commons on the 17th of December 1996. The debate was moved by Peter Kilfoyle, the then member for Liverpool, Walton, and he called for a public inquiry. And in replying to the debate, I undertook to consider all the evidence to see what could be done, and after the debate I met those family members who had come to London to hear the debate.

I then asked officials in the Home Office to consider just what could be done. That debate was held just a few months before the general election of 1997, and I believe that the work which I commissioned led, at least in part, to the decision of my successor, Jack straw, to ask Lord Justice Stuart-Smith to examine the evidence. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith regrettably, very regrettably, came to the conclusion that there was no basis for further investigation, and so it was not until the Prime Minister who attended the 20th anniversary of the disaster at Anfield in April 2009, persuaded the then government to set up the independent panel to examine and publish all relevant information that a public body at last arrived at a conclusion which went some way towards providing justice for the families.

I paid tribute to the Prime Minister for his intervention, for which he deserves great credit. I pay tribute also to the then Bishop of Liverpool, who chaired the panel, and to the noble Lord Lord Wills for his part in setting it up. My Lords, we can't be sure and we shouldn't deceive ourselves. We can't be sure that the existence of a duty of candour would have prevented the dismal aftermath of the Hillsborough tragedy. But it

18:59

Lord Rooker (Labour)

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might have done. And that's enough for me to support this bill. I for me to support this bill. I would just add this your Lordships have heard the powerful words of my noble friend Baroness May and noble friend Baroness May and others about the importance of the independent public advocate, and I independent public advocate, and I hope the noble Lord, the Minister, will take careful note of those

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will take careful note of those powerful words and will act on them. Thank you.

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I warmly welcome this bill, and I congratulate the government as a I congratulate the government as a whole, and Sir Keir Starmer, for bringing it forward, albeit in a bringing it forward, albeit in a belated way. Very, very welcome. And I've been incredibly moved by And I've been incredibly moved by the power and the perception of every speaker who brought their own every speaker who brought their own knowledge and their own experience to this debate. I think I'm right in saying I think I'm the only member of the Lordships House who was present at Hillsborough on that day in April 1989, and I witnessed from the main stand the horrific events as they unfolded and saw the scores of casualties being being brought out from Leppings Lane, end of the stadium and lane onto the pitch.

I don't think anyone in the ground fully appreciated, I certainly didn't the scale of the

19:02

Baroness Featherstone (Liberal Democrat)

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catastrophe that had taken place, and neither were we able to guess and neither were we able to guess just how long it would take for the truth finally to emerge. A process made immeasurably harder by the obstructive attitude of several obstructive attitude of several police forces, particularly the South Yorkshire Police. For many South Yorkshire Police. For many years they falsely claimed the. The falsely attempted to put the blame for the disaster on the Liverpool fans, claiming that it had been caused by hooligans fuelled by drink.

As the noble Baroness, lady May, said in her powerful speech. That was a lie that started on the day of the disaster itself, and it is one that persisted for years and years later, as early as August 1989. Lord Justice Taylor had published his interim report setting out his findings on the causes of a disaster. It was highly critical of the police operation and of some of the senior officers in the South Yorkshire force responsible for the policing of the match.

It concluded, and I quote, that the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control. He also addressed allegations about supporter behaviour, but it appeared in some earlier media coverage, making it clear that, in his view, the actions of supporters played no part in the disaster. This was followed by the setting up of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, which has been referred to in this debate chaired by the Right Reverend James Jones, then the Bishop of Liverpool, and that reported on the 12th of September 2012.

I wish to draw the House's attention to one particular finding, and that was this. The panel recommends that police. Police force records are brought under legislative control and that police forces are added to part two of the first schedule to the Public Records Act, 1958, thereby making them subject to, to to the supervision of the Keeper of Public records. I strongly support that recommendation because back in 2012 and indeed still today, police records as far as England and Wales are concerned, though not in Scotland and Northern Ireland, remained at the disposal of each forces chief Constable and the police are unaccountable for their records.

A stark example of what that could mean was contained in a further report from Bishop James, called the patronising Disposition of unaccountable, Unaccountable Power, published in 2017, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. He said that one comment from a Hillsborough victim's family member reported the following. I had a telephone call from the then South Yorkshire Chief Constable, Med Hughes, in the stages before the Hillsborough investigation panel was established during the. During the call he said I'm under no obligation to disclose anything and the papers belong to me.

If I

19:09

Baroness Bousted (Labour)

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wanted to, I could take them into the yard and have a bonfire with the yard and have a bonfire with them. Shortly after that, the panel reported. Shortly after the panel reported. Shortly after the panel reported, the Archives and Records Association took up the mantle of Association took up the mantle of campaigning on police records and writing to me in advance of this legislation and this debate. They legislation and this debate. They said this. So far, it's been a frustrating failure and a sad example of how the establishment closes ranks.

The police have managed to play a long game and maintain the support of Home Office civil servants, and whichever party has been in power to ensure that they continue to do as they please with their own records. This recommendation on police records was later endorsed. In a letter to the then Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, in July 2016 from the shadow Home Secretary, Andy Burnham MP. He described it as, quote, exactly as a very as vitally important. It was accidental access to police records that enabled researchers and the families of the Hillsborough victims to uncover the extent of alleged attempts by police officers to manipulate investigations into the disaster.

Future researchers must have a guaranteed right to access the maximum range of police records, and the police themselves must be obliged to preserve their records for public accountability purposes. Well, Mr. Burnham now has a new job, my Lords, and I hope that he will use his authority as Prime Minister to cut through the prevarication and the delay which has beset officials in his handling of this disgraceful sequence of events for years, and achieving government what he so courageously called for in opposition.

The Public Records Act is the standard that the rest of the public sector, including the civil service, already operates. The infrastructure is already there. We have established, recognises, recognised places of deposit for public records across England and Wales, and many police forces already archive their records in these and have an existing relationship with the local authorities. Active service adding police records to schedule two would oblige forces and officials to move much more quickly, and chief constables will have to accept that the records of their forces create and hold up public records, not their corporate or personal property.

I hope very much, my noble friend, when he replies to this debate, will save the government are considering this. And when I move an amendment to this effect in committee, we will take a sympathetic view of it. take a sympathetic view of it.

19:15

Baroness Hale of Richmond (Crossbench)

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I'd like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, the Minister Lord Lemos, for the very helpful and wide ranging discussion that we had last week. But I'd also like to thank his admirable predecessor, Baroness Levitt, for the time that she set aside to see me with the mother and the sister of Andrew Devine, who were constituents of mine in 1989, having sustained terrible injuries. Andrew died in July 2021 from complications relating to severe brain damage that he suffered during the crush, becoming the 97th Hillsborough fatality.

In the debate that I initiated in your Lordships House on the 13th of November 2025, and referred to by my noble friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller. I referred to the hope of the Devine family that there will be one enforceable code of conduct for public officials backed by meaningful sanctions. It's an issue I raised last week with the noble Lord Lord Lemos, and I hope he'll tell us what progress is being made in achieving this, and that he will commit to continue to engage with the family and with the House, about how the code will work and what will actually be in it.

Although, of course, this bill is about more than Hillsborough. For me, the story began in the run up and the days which followed the catastrophic semi-final played on April the 15th, 1989. Before the match, I'd sent the government correspondence questioning the suitability of the ground at Hillsborough in the days which followed. I began asking questions which went without answer for years and years on end. By way of example. I wrote to Sir Cecil Clothier, then the chairman of the Police Complaints Authority, calling for an independent inquiry, and in my letter describing these words a smokescreen of propaganda aimed at diverting attention from the truth.

In a note to the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, Sir Cecil reassured him that he had done his best to deflect his word, his to deflect my complaint. It is as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester has just said, a classic example of the closing of ranks. Repeated calls for a fully independent inquiry were similarly deflected, with Jack straw, then Home Secretary in 1998, stating as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that new evidence did not justify a new inquiry.

In 2009, the anger erupted when, as the noble Lord Lord Blunkett mentioned, the culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, was booed and interrupted by the crowd at an Anfield memorial service. To his eternal credit, Mr. Burnham stayed and he listened to the raw anger and that in turn led to the creation of the independent Hillsborough panel under the chairmanship of the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, and to the

19:21

Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Labour)

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2017 report that's been referred to the patronising disposition of the patronising disposition of unaccountable power and its call for the duty of candour. Shocking for the duty of candour. Shocking denialism had become unsustainable. A bill to achieve that purpose was A bill to achieve that purpose was introduced then by Mr. Burnham, with the Hillsborough Law Now campaign, launched here in campaign, launched here in Parliament in 2022. I also, along with others, pay tribute to their unflagging work for truth and justice.

It's been quite exemplary in 2020, for the Joint Committee on Human Rights decided to examine the bill. We published a report, Human Rights and the proposal for a Hillsborough Law and called for the duty of candour. But the JCHR, which I have the honour to chair, also called for proportionate legal aid and representation for bereaved families during inquests and inquiries to match the resources of the state. And I hope the Minister will say, how are we going to counter the disparity and ensure the equality of arms that other noble Lords have referred to during these proceedings? The JCHR has also examined ways of enhancing the role of the independent advocate, and I was very struck by what the noble Baroness, lady May, had to say about this.

But other noble Baroness, noble Lords as well. We examined ways of enhancing the role of assisting families and victims in the immediate aftermath of major disasters. We were deeply impressed by Cindy Butts, the independent public advocate, and the noble Lord Lord Wills, both of whom I invited and who accepted my invitation to give important evidence to the JCHR on her significantly under-resourced role. What is the government's current thinking on that? The noble Lord, during our discussion last week, said that it was possible, on the advice of his Bill team, that the scope of this bill might be broad enough here in this House for us to be able to bring something on the independent advocate into the bill.

But on Thursday, I also asked the Minister about the incorporation of the Hicks rule in February of this year. Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws Andy Burnham and I met Jenny and Trevor Hicks, whose teenage daughters Sarah and Victoria both died at Hillsborough. We met for the launch of the Hicks Rule campaign, calling for a legal mechanism to correct historic court records that falsely claimed victims of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster died instantly and endured no suffering. We know that is wrong. Jenny Hicks told our meeting.

I quote that for more than three decades, the law has recorded something about our daughters that we know simply isn't true. This isn't about compensation. It's about truth. It's about dignity. The meeting was held in the same House of Lords Committee room, Committee, room one, where in 1992, five Law Lords ruled against Jenny and Trevor Hicks as part of the process of accountability. How will we ensure that families facing similar battles, often going through hell, will be able to have the public record put straight when historic legal findings have been based on a farrago of lies and don't reflect the truth.

On Thursday last, I also shared with the Minister the story of a mother whose student daughter committed suicide and as a member of the. For the 100, which campaigned for greater accountability and legal clarity in higher education, universities and colleges of higher education are in the unusual position of being independent institutions, which also exercise public functions. How will they be expected to engage with the new laws, especially at inquests after the deaths of students or, as in the case of Cambridge, for instance, academic staff who were the duty of candour be fully engaged.

I hope that the Minister will write to me setting out clarification on that. I should declare that I have two honorary unremunerated connections with two Liverpool universities. We know that this bill is a lot about a lot more than what happened at Hillsborough. That's been set out by many, many other noble Lords. If this bill can bring an end to the depressingly familiar pattern of deflection, cover ups and concealment, backed up by exemplary penalties, adequate to punish outrageous conduct, legislators will at last be able to say that they have done their job and honoured the memories of those who had been the victims.

I support this bill. An honour and privilege to follow the Lord Lord Alton of Liverpool, who has been a stalwart supporter and advocate for the Hillsborough families right from the time the disaster occurred. I welcome the noble Lord Lord Lemos to the front bench. We're lucky to have him in dealing with a bill like this. I also pay tribute to the Baroness, my noble friend Baroness Levitt, who put in a huge amount of work in relation to this bill before the recess.

I also pay a very profound tribute to the Hillsborough families. It is the Hillsborough families and only because of the Hillsborough families and the experience of the people who suffered at Hillsborough, that this bill is here. It is an incredibly important bill. It represents a fundamental shift. It represents a shift whereby the government and public authorities pay a price for not just a cover up, but also for deliberately not helping people who have the misfortune to suffer as the horizon postmasters have.

As the Hillsborough families have, as the people with infected blood have suffered. Test the bill by reference to what happened in Hillsborough. The disaster was caused by a catastrophic act of negligence by the police. As the noble Baroness Baroness May said the very afternoon that they had done that, they then spread lies to the media to try to deflect blame from themselves. The former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, in his initial report, identified that it was a catastrophic failure by the police, but they obscured that in the inquest that followed.

At the inquest, the public sector and in particular the police, were heavily represented. The Hillsborough families who travelled from Liverpool across the Pennines to Sheffield every day that it was going on and it went on for weeks and weeks and weeks, were grotesquely underrepresented. The law is fine. It's open to all, just like the Savoy, as long as you can afford it. This bill deals with three of those aspects. First of all, the duty of candour. It would not have been open to the South Yorkshire Police to keep all their records.

They would have been obliged to reveal the documents in which they were coordinating the statements that the police gave to bring colour to the entirely false allegation that the fans had brought it upon themselves. So the duty of candour deals with that. Secondly, the crime of misleading the public in a serious manner, which is also in the Bill, would have prevented them from disseminating a false narrative to distract attention from what they had done. Thirdly, parity of representation at an inquest would ensure that depressing trek across the Pennines, where the coroner in the first inquest was bamboozled into coming to the wrong conclusion, would not have so easily happened.

In looking at this bill. We should test it against whether it achieves that which was necessary to ensure that Hillsborough would not happen again, but also that infected blood would not happen again. Remember, infected blood is state bodies deliberately allowing harm to be done to a whole range of children because they made judgements that these children were no part of as to what was the cheapest way to get blood. It's a terrible, terrible story. I have the following concerns about the bill maybe not achieving what it is supposed to achieve.

First of all, what is the scope of the duty of candour? Is the scope of the duty of candour that, for example, the police would have had to have admitted almost straight away that they were making up a false narrative? It should be clear that admission of wrongdoing is a vital part of the duty of candour. I am not sure that it says that at the moment. Secondly, the crime of misleading the public in the way that the police does only kicks in when there is, quote, harm to individuals and harm is defined as physical loss, economic loss.

And one other which I can't quite remember, but it's not it's not general enough. I don't want to discover that that crime wouldn't have applied to the false narrative put into the media by the South Yorkshire Police, because you couldn't identify any individual harm. It was all about protecting their own reputations and therefore harm is not applied. Thirdly, in relation to the issue about representation at inquests, there is there is a provision in the Bill that says people where there is a public body engaged in an inquest where their loved one has died, are entitled to legal aid in relation to it.

Is that enough to ensure parity? Anybody who has been to inquests where a whole range of public bodies are engaged, see K C, S, Q, C, S, B, c s and bars for all the public bodies and maybe one a person representing the family. Now, I'm not sure what the right answer in relation to that is, but there needs to be proper parity. My final point is in relation to the issue of public authorities, I am sure will take this seriously.

The person who obviously has got the obligation in relation to it is the head of that public authority, the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, when the cover up was happening, how do we ensure that he or she absolutely feels it in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the States? The way it was done was the actual individual carried the can. I think we might look at the question. The individual at the top of the organisation might carry the can he or she has got to have a defence? If they did absolutely everything they could and didn't do it intentionally.

But the person at the top with individual responsibility is the way to deal with it. I strongly welcome this bill. It is a really important bill and I hope that we can make it better. My Lords, it.

19:28

Lord Bellamy (Conservative)

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support this Bill, and it's with a heavy heart because, frankly, when I first became a public servant, I first became a public servant, now, nearly 60 years ago, I would never have anticipated that decades later, we would need to legislate to require public officials to to require public officials to behave with integrity and to tell the truth. But we do. And that's a the truth. But we do. And that's a cause for all of us to reflect on the state of our public services, for which all of us in this House have some responsibility.

I think I'm the only former permanent secretary speaking today. I feel that responsibility very deeply. Of course, like others, I want to congratulate those who have fought, first of all, to uncover the truth and then to win support for a bill which I hope will make the deceit, the obfuscation and the dishonesty which they encountered less likely in the future. I so admire what they have achieved, but of course, their fight should never have been necessary, any more than it should have been necessary for victims of the infected blood inquiry.

We can't. We just can't allow this to go on to stain our public services in the way that it is. So this is, of course, a hugely important bill and a hugely important moment. Inevitably, a lot of attention has been focussed on the proposed new duty for public authorities and officials to act with candour at inquiries and investigations. I think equally important is that part of the Bill, which imposes a new duty on them to take steps to maintain ethical conduct at all times, and I want to say a little about that, because the real test of the success of this bill is whether it helps to stamp out the kind of behaviour which led to Hillsborough, which led to infected blood and all the other tragedies that we've spoken about today.

Ultimately, this bill will be judged by whether we have fewer inquiries and the extent to which it begins to rebuild trust in our public services. And let's not forget how badly that trust has been lost. So whilst I wholeheartedly support part two, chapter two of the bill, I do think in its current form it is a little open ended, particularly with regard to the codes of conduct, which all authorities will now need to publish. So I want to make a few points about those codes.

The first point is that we need to remember that all of the failures that we've talked about today have occurred in spite of the existence of several well-intentioned and much lauded codes. The Civil Service Code, the code for Ministers, the Nolan Principles they all existed when these tragedies occurred. So we need to learn that codes themselves are not a guarantee for improved behaviour. Even with the welcome new accountability which the Bill introduces. And frankly, if all we're going to do is restate the Nolan Principles, we are going to have no effect at all on the way in which public authorities work.

The second point I want to make is that the codes must make absolutely clear that the ultimate responsibility of public officials is not to their department, not to the brand and reputation of the department, not to their senior managers, not even to Ministers. It is to citizens, the ordinary folk who suffered so badly in all of these cases. That is not, I think, clear enough in the existing codes. And if you want to see the consequences of that, have a closer look at the infected blood inquiry, where I fervently believe that the attempt to protect the brand reputation of the department led to vast numbers of people dying.

The third point is that achieving improved standards will require a change of culture, as others have said, and that will demand, above all, consistent, determined and visible leadership from the top. I just want to use an example which we might just reflect upon as well. I very much welcome the way in which the new Cabinet secretary, the head of the Civil Service, effectively the head of our public services, has chosen to publish her objectives. It's a fantastic step forward, but I have to note that these do not include a responsibility to promote to protect the highest standards of ethical conduct.

I think it should. I think there is a danger that we will pass this bill and things will carry on much as they are, which, frankly, is with complacency about ethical standards. And the last point I want to make is that if there are to be ethical codes and they're going to be enforced, they need to be clear. They need to be accessible. Now, the bill doesn't preclude that. Of course it doesn't. But the fact that individual authorities will be able to publish their own version of a code could confuse, rather than empower the public.

And that means that the guidance from. And it's a strange term to use the appropriate national authority, which I presumably means government. That guidance needs to be absolutely clear, and it needs to be in the form of a very strong Common Core template, which public authorities have to implement. At the end of the day, if people lose trust in the integrity of public authorities and public officials, it represents a real threat, a real threat to our constitutional democracy.

And that, again, is why this bill is so important. But this bill must be seen as the start, not the end of

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rebuilding trust. My Lords, no one in this country needs reminding of the terrible events which have summed up in that single word, Hillsborough. The pain single word, Hillsborough. The pain of the deaths of 97 people remain raw in the communities affected, not least because this was no not least because this was no accident. These people were unlawfully killed and as though that were not bad enough, what that were not bad enough, what followed was a national stain on our public services, which reverberates still and contributes to the suspicion that many of our citizens feel about the state itself, that it is not there to serve them any, and worse yet, that those who work for the state are often contemptuous of many of the ordinary people who just want to go around living their lives in peace and security.

Because what followed the deaths terrible enough, though those were was a cover up. Inquiry after inquiry has shown that the state subjected the families to lies and smears, all so that the people who are in charge would not be held responsible for the deaths. My Lords, members of your Lordships House have repeatedly paid tribute to the families because they never gave up. And in the end, what was revealed was something which goes far further than just affecting the families. It's about the kind of society that we want to be.

Because what has happened at the various inquiries and investigations is that the police lied, they falsified their notes and they got away with it, at least in part because they were represented by phalanxes of lawyers, paid for by the taxpayer. When the families, the ordinary people, could not get legal aid and it looked unfair because it was unfair. And the reason we need a law to deal with this, because regrettably, what happened after Hillsborough is not, as many others have said, an isolated incident.

Horizon Grenfell Windrush. Grooming gangs, infected blood. The list goes on and on. And those successive governments have wrung their hands. Nothing has. In fact, much happened, but no more. And I am proud that it was a Labour government which finally did something about it. My Lords, I have a particular interest in the criminal law. Consequences of failures of the state. The government is, in my view, right to abolish the old common law offence of misconduct in public office, which was too vague and too imprecise, and I welcome the creation of the four new offences.

But that said, I have some concerns about the drafting which may make these offences less effective than they ought to be. Just to give one example, I am concerned that these offences would not cover paramedics who attend 999 calls and other emergencies. They do not fall within the definition of those acting for a public authority as currently drafted. That is one example. I am not going to go through the others now, but I do wonder if my noble friend the Minister, will meet me so that I can tell him of my concerns and see if we can work together to make this bill even better.

My Lords, this new law will be about the recalibration of the relationship between the state and its citizens, the kind of society we want to be, where it is made explicit through our laws that the state is there to serve ordinary people, including those who are at the bottom of the socio economic scale. We believe everyone counts or nobody counts. And that's why I'm proud of the

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government for making this happen. Yeah.

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Yeah. My Lords, I to pay tribute to the fearless campaigning of the victims families and survivors of Hillsborough, whose resilience, Hillsborough, whose resilience, strength and courage over 36 long years in the face of an accountable years in the face of an accountable power and unthinkable injustice, made this bill become a reality. My Lords, Bishop James Jones should also be praised for his commitment, determination and dedication to getting us to this landmark point. My Lord, this bill is a welcome step on the road to improving openness and candour within public bodies.

But my Lords, this bill does not go far enough to protect victims of state injustice. The opportunity to strengthen the impact of this bill should not be lost. So can I ask the Minister to confirm that the government will ensure that the Bill has the strongest effect and guarantee that a timetable will be set without delay, to table secondary legislation, extending the duty of candour in clause two, and that the extension will include public officials subject to serious complaints, sometimes affecting thousands of people.

My Lords, with this in mind, I would like to draw attention to the Windrush victims and survivors who are part of a generation who came as British citizens 78 years ago from the Caribbean, answering the call from Britain, the motherland to come and help rebuild the country after the war. Yet the Windrush generation had to face adversity, discrimination, violence, rejection, racism and abuse. They couldn't get places to live. They had to take low paid jobs, even though they were qualified to take on senior roles.

But with determination, resilience and courage and driving force, they showed that Caribbean people, despite all the obstacles, hurdles and challenges they could survive and thrive even though they faced unbelievable prejudice and influence the country, they influenced the country with their style, with their music, their talent, vibrancy and creativity. And I'm proud to be part of that generation. However, astonishingly and brutally, many of them found themselves part of the hostile environment policy developed by the last government.

It had a catastrophic impact on the Windrush generation, who had their British citizenship taken away from them. It was established that over 15,000 victims suffered with loss of employment, pension loss of home, denied access to a passport, health and social care, a bank account, driving licence and much, much more. Many were wrongly deported to countries that they had not grown up in or even born in. Some were denied re-entry to the UK when they travelled abroad. My Lords, they suffered significant and unbelievable trauma.

Some have died because of the severe stress and their descendants have continued to be seriously impacted severely. To my Lords, survivors of the Home Office Windrush scandal have, because of these experiences, been calling for a public inquiry since 2018, when the scandal first came to public attention. But successive governments, including the current one, have dismissed and marginalised their calls for truth, accountability and repair. My Lords victims have had to face the trauma of missing personal documents, destroyed records, misleading statements all by public officials.

The ineffective compensation scheme, run by the Home Office, continues to retraumatise survivors. A lack of legal support is leading to more than half the claims made by survivors being rejected. My Lords, a report in April 2026 by the National Audit Office found that by January 2026, only 3148 claims have resulted in a payout. My Lords, the survivors of the Home Office Windrush scandal are rightly calling for a public inquiry to shine a light on the compensation scheme, which is vastly inferior to other schemes set up following state wrongs, and to hold the public bodies responsible for the grievous state harm to account.

My Lords, Windrush victims and survivors need a clear plan to be published, setting out how the duty of candour will be used to secure truth, accountability, justice and fair compensation for them. We need to know why innocent British citizens were allowed to lose their jobs, homes, healthcare, pensions, freedoms and dignity and their lives. Therefore, Windrush victims need to receive proper independent legal representation just as victims of Hillsborough Grenfell, the Post Office scandal and the infected blood scandal have fought to receive.

My Lords, the department responsible for any scandal, should not be allowed to investigate itself, judge his own wrongdoing and decide how much its victims deserve. My Lords, people are still dying while waiting for justice. They do not need another listening exercise, another apology or another promise that things will improve one day. Trust needs to be restored. My Lord, what victims need is a voice. Access to justice. And by widening the duty of candour, this bill can transfer some power away from the state which caused the harm in the first place, and give some power to victims who, as recent history has shown, has been repeatedly let down by the state.

My Lords, Windrush victims and survivors deservedly need the truth released. They need those responsible to be held accountable so that nothing like this ever happens again. They need independent legal help and fair compensation while they are still alive to receive it. Surely these British citizens are entitled to that justice. So I ask the Minister, will the government commit to an inquiry to show consideration and empathy for the Windrush victims and survivors who I noted he did not mention in his opening remarks.

I look forward to what the Minister has to say.

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My Lords. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this matter. opportunity to speak on this matter. I'd like to start really by paying tribute to the victims of multiple tragedies that stretch from Hillsborough to Grenfell, who have given, I think, this country the given, I think, this country the chance to raise its head and feel good about itself in a law that is good about itself in a law that is being passed, that speaks to accountability, confidence in our own democracy, the fact that we can open ourselves up and learn from incomparable disaster.

Because actually, I think that's what I would like to start with, that this is utterly a positive. It is a tragedy like the tragedies that have led to it, that it's taken so long, and it has been the courage of the people who suffered the most that have brought us to it. But now we're here. We should celebrate the fact that the UK is doing this, regardless of the granular detail of the debate that will follow necessarily, or the points that people who are more legal expert than me will make in the debates that follow the principle of this should not be underestimated.

A country that is confident enough to do this is a country worth being proud of, and we should celebrate it in that context. Because if you look around the world, there is a distance from this. There is a drawing away from this instinct, and we should be pleased and we should be proud across all the benches that is coming here, even if we wish to debate the detail. My whole working life was spent from the shop floor to leading an organisation in responding to the tragedies we're talking about today.

I don't intend to list them, but some of them are some of the most significant losses of life that this country has seen in the public space, both when I was in the military and then in many years, service in the fire service in the years that followed. My experience in those spaces as a firefighter, as a soldier, and then leading an organisation that had the public duty to respond to disaster, was that disasters are, as you might expect, terrible places.

Things will go wrong, are going to go wrong. In fact, I've never been at one either in a leadership position or as an operational responder, where in the aftermath you didn't think, if only we'd done that, or if only we'd done better, if only we'd had the foresight to do that, if only our radios would work better, if only we hadn't rendezvoused at that point. If only the corner position wasn't there, if only we could have got another four people to the floor above.

What that tells me is that this law is vital, particularly to the military, to policing, to the intelligence services and the emergency services. And I think Baroness Levitt makes a particularly good point about my colleagues in the health care profession, who are equally courageous and respond in spaces that are highly nuanced with difficult decision making. This law is particularly important to those organisations, and we must not shy away from it, because even if you lead an organisation of people who are genuinely heroic on a daily basis, as I did, you know, we were rescuing three people a day in the London Fire Brigade from genuinely life threatening incidents where the firefighters responding could die.

Multiple firefighters injured every year, colleagues lost in that service. It was the same in the military. That cannot absolve you from scrutiny, and I'm afraid there is a great temptation within uniformed services because of the heroic nature of what they do. The highly nuanced environment within which they take decisions to seek absolution from this responsibility. It cannot be that way. And that is not to diminish either the courage or the fantastic leadership I've experienced in my two careers, but I'm afraid it can cloud judgement at the point of criticality when you are scrutinised, because on the one hand, you now have you have this great responsibility to those you lead who you have watched, as I did at Grenfell, put themselves in unbelievable harm's way.

But, you know, simultaneously, the institution in its widest context, over many decisions over many years over multiple leaders, has let those very people down as well. How do you square those two things? How do you keep people motivated, coming to work, to do horrible things that the vast majority of people in this House will never

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have had to have done, and would never want to do? Well. The answer is you shine a light

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The answer is you shine a light on it. Because what I want to say to you today is that this law is also for those uniformed service, also for those uniformed service, those intelligence officers, those special forces soldiers, those armed police officers, and at the time they faced that scrutiny. People do not always feel it. And I think the mechanisms to scrutinise think the mechanisms to scrutinise bodies like the organisation I run were not adequate enough. They didn't even feel like they wanted it because it felt like an attack rather than normal business, rather than what would be expected.

I take the point about ethics. It is well made, but I believe you need sanction and guardrails to ensure that big institutions with their own power, with their own histories, with their own heroism and their own stories and their own version of the truth, are duty bound to stare into failure and acknowledge it. And I say this from personal experience. The single biggest education I had post-grenfell was from those who had lost the most. The families. And it was the hardest meetings and they still are the hardest meetings.

I met with a survivor recently here and he said to me before we knew that this bill would pass, that he was so tired. He was sick of campaigning, he was sick of not being listened to. And I mean no disrespect in this. He said, I don't want to be like Margaret Aspinall in 20 years time. I don't want to give my life to doing something the state should just do and are responsible. Democracy would bring into place. He said I don't want to do it any more.

So it is with great relief. I see that this bill will pass. It is absolutely, morally the right thing to do. The only final point I would make, and there are two kind of detailed points I would like to come back to and I'm sure we will, is I think we do have to strengthen the voice of those who suffer the most within the discharge of this act. So whether it's by way of the IPA or whether it's by way of another mechanism, I think we have to place them in the centre.

Like I said, the greatest education I had in LFB was to bring survivors, those who had lost their families into a committee and a panel along with those, for example, from the new Cross Fire who had suffered generationally before, and give them agency within our decision making. It was sometimes extremely uncomfortable. They did not always agree with us, but in doing so, and I don't claim any moral superiority in this, we did it because we were made to. In a way, it did us a great favour.

I think we need to see the same in this. And apologies for slightly overrunning in respect to public inquiries. There has to be an oversight mechanism. There is no point making recommendations if you're not then held to account. As a man who's held to account, I think rightly, by the Home Secretary at the time in a special ministerial board. It works. I thank you for your attention, and I look forward to the passage of the bill.

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My Lords, it's a pleasure and an honour, although rather difficult honour, although rather difficult to follow. The noble Lord, who spoke movingly and from the heart spoke movingly and from the heart about things he knows a great deal about, and I would thank him for about, and I would thank him for what he has said. I apologise for having been less in the chamber than I would have liked because of another bill in committee upstairs. My Lords, I look at this bill from the point of view of the subpostmasters, and I declare an interest as a member of the Horizon Compensatory Compensation Advisory Board, and it was good to hear the remarks of my friend, the noble Lord Lord Beamish, who also sits on that board.

So I have an initial question on which everything else I say follows to the Minister. Does the bill cover the Post Office, a so-called arm's length organisation? I believe that because of the definition contained in schedule two, paragraph four, the Post Office is covered. But I should be grateful for the noble Minister's explicit confirmation of that. An important aspect of the Post Office scandal is that it began as a computer problem, both hardware and software, but rapidly turned into a human behaviour problem as managers denied the existence of the computer problem.

Perhaps they denied it first to themselves, but later they certainly denied it to everyone else. Managers believed or pretended to believe what they were paid to believe, and therefore what they wanted to believe. We all tend to believe what we want to believe, but how does a duty of candour in practice apply in such circumstances? It's human nature to defend oneself and the organisations of which we are a part, and which pay our salaries, and only the most self-confident freely admit to their own faults.

So in one sense, this Bill tries to counteract human nature. It will work only if it sets up institutions and cultures which reward honesty and openness. I'm not convinced this bill does reward openness. It does attempt to punish deceitfulness, but that's a different thing. How do we reward the whistleblower, which is different from protecting the whistleblower? How does the bill ensure that these problems are nipped in the bud before they ever get to the stage of public inquiries? OK.

It provides for internal policies, for discouragement, from retaliation against whistleblowers, and that's good. But if you've lived through the Post Office scandal, as the noble Lord Lord Beamish and I have, you know, how insidious is the accusation of disloyalty? You know how a hint here or there that you're being too loyal to your professional ethics and not loyal enough to your business? You know how those can influence behaviour. You know that career pathways depend on being seen as part of a team.

So the bill could do more, perhaps through the institution of an office for whistleblowers, perhaps through adopting some of the ideas, as Lord Beamish referred to, that Professor Hodges's put putting forward about non blame cultures, perhaps through the independent Public Advocate. But it could do more to encourage good behaviour from the start. How will the Bill actually work in practice? There are those directly employed by the Post Office. How will it

19:35

Lord Davies of Brixton (Labour)

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extend to them? Paula Vennells told me that it was impossible for the me that it was impossible for the Post Office or Fujitsu to access the subpostmasters accounts remotely. We know now that that was remotely. We know now that that was wrong. Was it an intentional lie? wrong. Was it an intentional lie? We may never know, but personally, I believe that at the time she said I believe that at the time she said it to me, she probably believed it. But later she must have come to recognise that it was untrue.

Does the bill mean that she was required to come back and put something right that she had realised was wrong? And since I wasn't myself an inquiry, I was an MP working for my constituent. Would the bill cover her talking to me? We know that Susan Crichton, the Post Office's general counsel, asked Fujitsu to work their magic. That meant remotely access the subpostmasters accounts. But does her knowledge become imputed to the chief executive of the organisation, of which she was a part? How does the bill deal with wilful blindness in the face of evidence? How does it cover the work of the investigators? They told each of the subpostmasters that they were the only ones with the problem.

They knew that that was a lie. It had the result that subpostmasters, at their lowest ebb and facing false accusations that would lead some of them to take their own lives, were isolated from each other and deprived of the support that collectives like trade unions provide. It was one of the most shocking aspects of the scandal amongst many, many shocking aspects. Would that be a breach of this bill? How precisely would it extend to Fujitsu, that glorious company which has paid not a penny of compensation and which remains on the government's list of companies to do business with? How does it apply to the lawyers upon whose advice, we are told, the Post Office CEO depended.

How does it apply to the principal accounting officer who delegated his responsibility to others? I do welcome this bill, but I worry that it concentrates most on public inquiries and investigations. The period after something has gone so seriously wrong that the government is dragged kicking and screaming to having a public inquiry, and I believe that it needs to stop the bad behaviour before there's a need to punish it. Yes. My Lords, I'd like to congratulate my hon.

Friend, the Minister, my noble friend the Minister, on his speech this afternoon, and the moving and powerful contributions from many members of the House across the House, including Lord Blunkett Bouchard Rowe and the right reverend Prelate. The Bishop of Manchester. A long time ago I was born in the wonderful city of Liverpool. I've identified with the city and its football teams ever since, supporting Liverpool, almost obsessively, but always having a sneaking regard for Everton too. And that, by the way, was before Andy Burnham became Prime Minister.

I've also found myself involved from time to time with improving education in the city. On the 15th of April 1989, the day of that terrible and tragic set of events at Hillsborough, I was the best man at a wedding. It was, incidentally, my noble friend Lord Pitt-Watson his wedding. So, very unusually for me, I didn't even think about football until the evening. I can remember the sense of shock and horror when I finally heard the news. I'm humbled now, all these years later, far too many years later, to have the opportunity to speak in support of this important legislation and to publicly express my admiration for and sympathy with the Hillsborough families and all they've been through.

Today, I have only one point to make, and it's to reinforce one the Minister made originally and others have referred to. It's this while the sanctions and enforcement are absolutely essential. If this legislation is successful, as we all hope, those sanctions and enforcement will rarely have to be used, because our collective intention is surely to tip the balance of the culture irreversibly in favour of candour and integrity. As Lord Blunkett mentioned, the ethics and as Michael Bouchard Lord Bichard said about the importance of acting ethically as people have done and always should have done over the 60 years he's been in public service.

I believe that is what will happen. The bill will go with the grain of the best elements of the public service. It will reinforce and strengthen the culture of integrity to which many, but sadly, not all public servants have always been committed. It will surely to act as a deterrent to any who are not. As a result, I repeat, it will tip the balance in favour of candour and integrity. Paradoxically, therefore, the more successful legislation is, and the deeper the culture becomes, the less enforcement will be necessary.

But this is an important. But it won't happen. As night follows day. It will have to be worked for day after day, week after week, year after year. Culture change doesn't happen by passing a piece of legislation. I urge public servants everywhere, especially those in leadership positions across the public service and those who make policy for the public services to consistently and constantly build and reinforce a deep and abiding culture of candour and integrity. A culture in which people do the right thing, however difficult it might be, because it is the right thing.

Even more than this historic legislation, such a culture would be the finest possible tribute to the Hillsborough families and their long, courageous campaign. Once at a cup final, I wrote a huge and striking banner among Liverpool fans that was perhaps more profound than most. It read. What we achieve in life echoes in eternity. Eternity is a big word. Not even the House of Lords can legislate for that. But eternity or not, the outcome of the long, courageous campaign of Hillsborough families will, I believe, echo through the public services for a very long time and hopefully forever.

I

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strongly support the bill. Yes, my. Lord, I shall focus my remarks on a less frequented part of this on a less frequented part of this bill, part three, which repeals the common law offence of misconduct in public office and replaces it by new statutory offences. It's almost six years since the Law Commission six years since the Law Commission reported on this. After a detailed statutory consultation. The common law offence is an ancient one but law offence is an ancient one but fell largely into disuse during the 20th century.

Attempts to use it again more recently have demonstrated its defects, notably a lack of clarity and precision. These defects created the potential for what the Law Commission described as misuse, for example, in prosecuting journalists injustice and a tendency to target junior rather than senior officials. The Law Commission recommended that the common law offence be repealed and replaced by two statutory offences. It is to the government's credit that this recommendation is given effect in the Bill. What remains for us, I would suggest, is to ensure that the statutory offences have the clarity, the precision and the efficacy that the common law lacked.

With that in mind, I have three concerns in particular. First, the clause 13 offence is committed only if a person uses their office to obtain a benefit, or to cause another person to suffer detriment. Any defence lawyer worth their salt will take this as an invitation to argue that the offence can only be committed if a benefit is actually obtained, or a detriment actually suffered. That may, to be fair, not be the government's view, a Minister stated in Commons Bill committee last December that the offence can be committed if the Law Commission recommended.

Where public office is used with the intent to obtain a benefit or to cause detriment, that would correspond. As the noble Lady Baroness Hamwee has indicated, with the position under the Bribery Act 2010, section two. But laws need to be clear on the face of the statute book, particularly when they fall to be applied by juries. I hope clause 13 will be amended to put this beyond doubt. Secondly, the deliberately narrow defence recommended by the Law Commission to protect whistleblowers, which would require office holders to prove that their conduct was in the public interest, has been translated in the Bill into a far broader defence of reasonable excuse.

This would weaken the offence, opening the way for defendants who have behaved in a seriously improper way to seek to avoid penalisation by relying on such matters as short staffing or lack of training matters which might be considered a reasonable excuse, but which are obviously not in the public interest. The impact assessment makes the point that honest mistakes or finely balanced operational decisions should not be caught by this offence. Indeed, so. But the requirement of seriously improper behaviour ensures that they will not, whatever the scope of the statutory defence.

My third concern relates to the Law Commission's recommendation that contractors who exercise functions or perform work on behalf of the government should be covered by the definition of public office holder. But the definition of works for in clause 253 is a narrow one. It encompasses a contract of employment, but not a contract to provide public functions. Schedule four to the bill is less clear and less extensive than it should be. Baroness Levitt has given one example and promises more.

I was delighted to hear it, and there is no explicit provision for corporate liability. A accompanied by consent and connivance liability for company officers as. Again, there is under the Bribery Act. Finally, one further reflection. The terms of reference of the Ethics and Integrity Commission created in October 2025 task it with, and I quote advising public authorities on the development of clear codes of conduct with effective oversight arrangements in line with the planned forthcoming obligations of the Public Office Accountability Bill.

Yet the source of such guidance is stated in clause 11 of the Bill to be not the Ethics and Integrity Commission, but the appropriate national authority, as the noble Lord Bichard suggested, and as clauses 11, four and 24 confirm. This appears to mean the government. So a question to the Minister has the government had second thoughts about giving the Integrity and Ethics Commission a role in this bill, and if so, why? More broadly, the independence and indeed the very existence of the Commission, are currently guaranteed by nothing more than whether the government of the day desires them.

A future government could sweep it away without the need even for the Assent of Parliament, dismissing as a quango a body whose whole purpose is to guard against the abuse of executive power. The Committee on Standards in Public Life, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord Evans, made a powerful case in its 2021 report upholding standards in public life for placing constitutional watchdogs on a statutory footing so as to give them at least the protections of Parliament. I wonder whether that is something that should be envisaged for the Ethics and Integrity Commission, and I wonder whether this Bill might achieve its part, might play its part in

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achieving that. My Lords, it is a pleasure to begin the new term with support for begin the new term with support for this Bill. I begin with my tributes, firstly, of course, to the Hillsborough law campaigners, survivors, family members, lawyers and supporters. A shining example to anyone who strives against grave injustice anywhere in the world. When this bill passes, I hope soon the achievement will be theirs to the benefit of millions of others. I remember awarding them a Liberty Human Rights Award at a star studded ceremony 13 years ago.

They were the real stars. Their struggle, as we heard, began 24 years earlier, in 1989, with the greatest sporting event disaster in our history and the long, corrupt cover up that followed it. Sad, my Lords, that even in the two years since the last general election, there have been concerted attempts to create blanket and prevent anything now recognised as this bill's central duty of candour from reaching the statute book. So thanks also to the new Prime Minister, a long time supporter of the campaign in and out of Parliament and government, his return to Westminster will no doubt have focussed minds and shifted roadblocks.

Thirdly, respect to my noble friend Baroness Levitt, whose name graces the section 19 Statement of Human Rights compatibility. On the face of the Bill, we shall miss her criminal legal expertise at the close of this debate, but it's so good to hear her participating with her characteristic distinction. I suggest, my Lords, that the whole House should support this measure. Progressives, with our instinctive loathing of inequalities of arms and abuses of power, conservatives, with their deeply held suspicions of the dangers of overweening and unaccountable state power in particular independence.

But hopefully all of us, with an unshakeable commitment to the rule of law. It's not, I think, my Lords, insignificant, that we will hear from the noble and learned Baroness Hale of Richmond today after not just Hillsborough Windrush infected blood, the Manchester Arena, Grenfell, the postmasters and countless other scandals where public bodies closed ranks at the expense of their victims and the public they were supposed to serve, it can no longer complacently be claimed that a statutory duty of candour is not necessary.

In our old, unbroken democracy. And, to be clear, to be very clear, genuinely sensitive, as opposed to embarrassing information, will continue to be protected. My Lords, public trust in vital institutions is in short supply. Having called for, served on and studied various probes over many years, even I have become sometimes cynical at the way that politicians respond to public outcry, with long grass inquiries to which respondents may obfuscate and even lie with impunity, and where public bodies are represented by banks of expensive lawyers, whilst victims and their families struggle to be heard on a shoestring, say my Lords, parity of representation again, as we've heard, is another vital pillar of the scheme.

I hope that it is sufficiently robust in its formulation, and by no means least, my Lords, the requirement of codes of ethical conduct for public authorities to embed the duty of candour in culture, as well as in law, if there are any remaining sceptics of this groundbreaking Bill to them. I say this, of course law alone cannot remedy instincts rooted in collective vested interests in self-preservation. Still, law can help encourage and enforce better instincts that are, in the end, in the best long term interests of vital public services and institutions.

In the words of the great former US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant electric light, the most efficient policeman. So, my Lords, scrutiny, of course. But surely the supportive scrutiny this Bill and those who've struggled for it for

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so long, so richly deserve to. My Lords, I share the mood of

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My Lords, I share the mood of this House about the tragedy of Hillsborough, and I pay tribute to all those who have spoken so all those who have spoken so movingly and with great sensitivity about the long suffering that has about the long suffering that has caused, and they have drawn rightly on their own experiences the very on their own experiences the very least, surely we can expect of all of us, of all public servants, elected and unelected, is that we should tell the truth to an inquiry that should be a minimum requirement or expectation, and surely we should go further and expect all public officials, faced with an inquiry to willingly collaborate, to offer information, to share the relevant papers, rather than seeing it as a defensive measure they have to take to protect themselves and their small part of the public sector from proper scrutiny.

They should want to get to the bottom of it to learn from the experience. How do you run a good organisation? You learn from your mistakes as well as reinforcing your successes. And so I want to concentrate in my brief remarks on how important a properly enforced and widely accepted, accepted and adopted duty of candour is throughout the public sector. To avoid another series and chapters of disasters of the kind we have to unfortunately review today everything from bad blood to the Grenfell fire to the Hillsborough disaster, to the Post Office mugging of some of their best employees.

And I think if we could get the public sector to adopt that more widely, we would start to intercept problems early and avoid them getting out of control and we would succeed in stopping some problems ever emerging. There are many good public officials already who do that automatically and don't need to be told, but clearly not enough, because we've seen too many tragedies coming from too many different parts of the public sector. I pay tribute to the noble Lord Lord Arbuthnot, who led a small group of US MPs in the Commons some years ago, who were quite convinced that the subpostmasters were being wronged and that the Post Office senior management were doing bad things by not understanding the fault was from a computer and not from the people.

And I can remember saying to a succession of Ministers we had at the time, is it likely that suddenly a lot of some of your best managers who've been honest and running good businesses for many years would all become crooks at the same time? And would they become such incompetent crooks that it would all show up in the accounts and the computer runs? As soon as they took the money off the Post Office, it was completely nonsensical. And yet we weren't able to get this simple point across to Ministers taking briefs from the Post Office, from senior executives who were working with lawyers.

And so they live the lie. And they tried to persuade us to something that was patently absurd. Now, this is not just history. The Post Office tragedy goes on because many of the things are still not being fixed. There are still subpostmasters whose reputations have not been properly rehabilitated and publicly enough. So government get on with it. And there are still subpostmasters who haven't received their compensation. Successive governments have failed again. Government must get on with it. If we're going to make any sense of this new spirit embodied in a bill which has a very welcome aim, these things need fixing now.

Or let us take the case of the workers in Scunthorpe for British Steel. The government has recently nationalised British Steel. It has led the public to believe, and I presume, has led the workers in Scunthorpe to believe, that the main purpose is to save the jobs of those working at the blast furnaces in Scunthorpe. Now, is that actually going to be the case? Do we have enough candour here? Because we also know that the government thinks that blast furnaces should be replaced by electric arc furnaces.

We know there used to be plans to do that for Scunthorpe. We also know that if that happened, there would be a very big loss of jobs because you need far fewer workers in an electric arc furnace plant than you do in a blast furnace plant. Now let's have some candour. Government. If you are genuinely going to preserve these jobs for many years, that would be very good news for the workforce. But can you guarantee that? And let's have some candour for the taxpayers.

How much is that going to cost? Apparently the British Steel is losing £1.3 million a day. How many more days can you go on losing that amount of money? For how many years? Or is there a plan? We still haven't been told the plan that would actually reduce those losses whilst preserving all those jobs. These are the kind of things that a government needs to get right if it's going to persuade people for more nationalisation, and if it's going to persuade people that a doctrine of candour can actually work well, let's take the railways.

There have been a couple of unfortunate crashes over the summer, and I presume that Network Rail and those involved looked quickly at what had gone wrong, because if something really bad had gone wrong that could repeat itself, they would have had to shut down other parts of the network, which they didn't do. But we didn't have any candour at the time about why those people had been injured and why I think two people had died. And shouldn't we have more candour about that? Why don't we get a debate now that the railway is coming fully nationalised into the issue of why it is you do not get a seat belt on an intercity or an express train when the crash.

Investigations usually reveal that most of the serious injuries and deaths are caused by people being flung out of their seats into hard surfaces and sharp surfaces, or thrown against windows, which is what causes the real damage to people. So government, I love the idea of candour. I love the idea of honesty. I do think it is the only way to run things well. I think you need to be honest. As soon as something starts to go wrong, you need to share it with people and you have to come to the the House of Commons or the House of Lords and say, this has gone wrong, but we know the fix and this is what we're going to do.

That is not happening in enough cases. The government that wants more nationalisation should particularly look to the nationalised industries. As someone who's thought and written a bit about them, I find it's becoming fashionable again. But please get it right.

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The Lords. I make it crystal clear that I support the Bill. I will indeed support a tougher bill will indeed support a tougher bill to include better protection for whistleblowing, because prevention is better than cure. And it's quite is better than cure. And it's quite clear, as has already been said, that without a national oversight commission dealing with inquests commission dealing with inquests and inquiries, it's likely such reports will continue to gather reports will continue to gather dust. Now I realise we're going to be told these are issues for other bills.

I've heard this one in the past many, many times. I've also learned that you need to act when you can legislatively, even if you can only get 80% of what you need or what you want, take it. Then, because all the other plans and promises will be down the road by several years. And I think we need these two issues in particular to make a stronger bill. And we can get them. We can get them put into this bill.

And I only want to be brief. But while several scandals are referred to in the volumes of briefing on the bill, it's absolutely clear the damage done to Hillsborough families over the decades has created the pressure and momentum for the bill. At the Inquests Family listening Project in 2025, a participant said, and I quote, it's only when we had the Hillsborough independent panel did the families get full disclosure without disclosure. You don't know what you're up against now. We will again fail these families if we do not build in sufficient resources.

And this is the final point in her speech raised by Baroness Manningham-Buller, that we need the resources because otherwise the extra work will be taken from front line services. In general, I regret to say this we've become a nation that scrimps along on the big issues. It's not like it used to be. We didn't always scrimp along because that's what we should be doing to do. And I think to prevent this, we need to have a belief, a belief that those in running the front line services will have the guts in using this bill when they are asked to do something that cuts frontline services, they will speak up and say, we're cutting front line services to do what we need to do as a result of this bill, and to use this bill to tell us the truth, because otherwise we'll simply have a commission of power and cuts that are taken without us being told about it, because people will get on and do the extra work that Baroness Manningham-Buller said would be required, but they won't do other work.

And I think we need a belief, and I have yet to hear the evidence, that we'll have sufficient support from the government or the House for those

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people to take those actions. I very much welcome this bill. I mean, the Hillsborough families had mean, the Hillsborough families had not only to endure an unimaginable loss, but then to spend decades trying to establish the truth about trying to establish the truth about what had happened. And sadly, so often public institutions respond often public institutions respond to appalling situations by becoming defensive, protecting their reputations rather than by being reputations rather than by being open about their own actions.

So the duty of candour and assistance is a very important change. And so, too is the attempt to address the inequality between bereaved families and public authorities. At inquests and inquiries. However, there is an aspect of institutional failure which I hope we can explore as this bill progresses. The Bill quite properly deals with what institutions must do when something has gone badly wrong, and an inquiry or an investigation follows. But the history that has brought us to this bill raises an earlier and important question.

What on earth was happening inside those institutions while the wrongdoing was taking place? Many of our major scandals demonstrate that the eventual revelation was not by any means the first occasion on which anybody knew that something might be wrong. There had been warnings, complaints, or people within an organisation who had tried to raise concerns, who found themselves often on gardening leave or signing NDAs for a sum of money. The abuse by Jimmy Savile was not uncovered because nobody had ever had, not because nobody had ever had concerns about him.

The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse demonstrated repeatedly that institutions had received information about the abuse long before they were responded adequately, and the infected blood inquiry. And I would like, although she's not in her place to put on record my thanks to the noble Lady Baroness May for commissioning that inquiry. After 35 or 40 years of people trying to get justice, and I also have to declare my own interest because one of my sister's twin boys had haemophilia and was infected with hepatitis C, and he died aged 35, leaving a ten month old baby daughter.

So the blood inquiry inquiry did expose failures that had happened over many years in which information existed but was not confronted. And to this day, and despite an excellent inquiry, those who lied and covered up what was happening have suffered no detriment. And I have to say, when I talk about this, and I haven't said this publicly before, I do believe the state killed my nephew because what was known in the Department of Health then it was known. It was known it was a cover up.

They knew they were giving infected blood, so they murdered him. Forgive me. Not to mention the church in paedophilia. Anyway, the cases are very different, but they reveal a recurring institutional problem. The point at which the desire of an organisation protects its reputation becomes, at that point it becomes something more dangerous. It's a reason not to ask the questions which might produce damaging answers and reputation. Of course, it matters to institutions, to public institutions, but there's an important distinction between earning public confidence by dealing honestly with failure and seeking to preserve public confidence by preventing failure from becoming known about.

And once an organisation crosses that line, its incentives become distorted. A complaint may cease to be regarded as information which needs investigated, and instead it's regarded as a reputational problem which needs managing, and the person raising a concern becomes someone who's seen as a problem and treated as such. The bill recognises part of this. It requires public authorities to promote high standards of ethical conduct and to adopt codes dealing with candour, complaints and protected disclosures. But I wonder, in fact, I don't think we've got the balance right between the responsibilities of the person who raises a concern and the responsibilities of those who receive it.

We spend a great deal of time quite properly considering whistleblowers, but in many of these scandals, somebody did speak up. Sometimes many, many, many people did speak up. And the failure was that the institute did not listen. And that raises a very different question of accountability, because if somebody in a position of responsibility receives credible evidence of serious wrongdoing or a continuing risk to others, what responsibility do they have to ensure that it is properly examined in this bill? It's not enough to provide a whistleblowing procedure.

If those receiving the warning can satisfy their responsibility by processing the complaint, rather than confronting what it says. Now, I recognise there are difficulties in translating that into law. Not every complaint should trigger a major investigation. Allegations can be mistaken, malicious or impossible to substantiate, and those running public services must be able to exercise reasonable judgement. But where there is credible evidence of serious wrongdoing, systemic failure or a continuing risk of significant harm, should there not be a positive responsibility on those in positions of authority to ensure that it is properly investigated and acted upon? I would be interested to hear from the noble Lord, the Minister, how far he believes the provisions in the Bill already achieve that.

I do not think they do. The bill stated purpose is that public authorities should act with candour, transparency and frankness at all times. Because. Yeah, because the specific enforcement duty of candour and assistance is principally tied only to inquiries and investigations. If we are serious about changing institutional behaviour, that principle has to operate at the point when the difficult decisions are being made, not at the later point. When an inquiry asks why those decisions were made.

So a critical question for me is this bill progresses is whether it imposes sufficient responsibility and sufficient consequences on those at the top who receive credible warnings and fail to act. The duty of candour should help us establish the truth when something has gone wrong, but the greater achievement would be to ensure that uncomfortable truths are confronted early enough, and action taken so that disasters never happen in the first place.

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My Lords, I am a panel member of the Public Inquiry into Orgreave, now a modern housing estate on the now a modern housing estate on the outskirts of Sheffield. In 1984, it was a major South Yorkshire coking was a major South Yorkshire coking plant. On the 18th of June 1984, Orgreave was a site of conflict between approximately 6000 police officers from 28 different forces, led by the South Yorkshire Police led by the South Yorkshire Police Force, and approximately 5000 striking miners who were picketing Orgreave to stop coke being transported to British steel blast furnaces.

It was an extremely violent event. Miners and police officers were injured, some seriously. There were mounted police charges, including into the village of Orgreave itself. The use of short and long shields, truncheons and police dogs. The Orgreave inquiry has been established to investigate what happened on that day, during which 95 miners were arrested and later charged with riot and unlawful assembly. The former riot at that time carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The first batch of 15 cases on the charge of riot were tried the following year.

On, starting on the 8th of May 1985, the trial collapsed after 40 days when the prosecution offered no further evidence. In 1991, the South Yorkshire Police paid £425,000 in compensation to 39 miners in response to their claims for assault, wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution. This Act's title official title is the Public Office Accountability Bill. Its more common title is The Hillsborough Law. In respect to the 97 football fans who were unlawfully killed on the 15th of April 1989 at a football match policed by the South Yorkshire Police, relatives of those who died

19:43

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party)

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on that dreadful day faced a delay of 23 years before the findings of of 23 years before the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel into the disaster were published in September 2012. Published because

19:43

Lord Davies of Brixton (Labour)

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September 2012. Published because they will not give up, they would not be silent because they were so

19:43

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party)

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not be silent because they were so brave and so courageous. Those involved in Orgreave. On the 18th involved in Orgreave. On the 18th of June 1984, and campaigners led by the Orgreave Truth and Justice campaign established in 2012, have had an even longer wait of 42 years for a public inquiry to be established. Now, clearly it is a huge challenge to investigate an event which took place over four decades ago. That is why it is so essential that all the respondents to any inquiry ensure that they now, even before this legislation is passed, respect and fulfil their duty of candour.

It is vital that they provide all the documentation that they have in their possession to the inquiry, that they hold back nothing of relevance and of interest, no matter that this might place their organisation in an unfavourable light, it is vital that they participate fully in the investigation, and I echo the point made previously by Lord Falconer that all police records must be put under proper national control. In 2024, it was reported that the Northumbria Police destroyed two boxes of evidence of events at Orgreave.

The force said that this was in line with its data protection rules. I strongly welcome the new offence of misleading the public contained in this legislation, and the new duty placed upon public bodies, to embedded candour at the heart of public services, and to promote the ethical conduct of their employees. Based on the Nolan Principles. So the Orgreave inquiry has published a list of issues to be investigated. These include the planning and authorisation for tactics used, including mounted officers and mounted charges, the extent to which His Majesty's Government and government departments were involved in the planning for the 18th of June 1984, a detailed examination of the chronology of the conduct of the picketers and police officers.

On the 18th of June, 1984, the arrest and charging decision for picketers and the process for making and authorising those decisions, and the accuracy, integrity and independence of police statements. The full list of issues to be investigated is available on the inquiry website and in light of the important questions posed by the inquiry, I want to take this opportunity to ask the noble Minister, Lord Lemos, what is the government's position on historic inquiries such as Orgreave, namely, will a duty of candour be required of organisations who provide evidence of long past events which may reveal evidence which retrospectively places that organisation in a poor light? And finally, there is a view that the Orgreave inquiry should not be taking place, that the events of 40 years ago should be left in the past.

I do not agree with this view. Two weeks ago, I was present at the Kent Miners rally at the site of the Betteshanger Colliery. There, in front of the inquiry stand, I met an elderly retired miner who was arrested and charged at Orgreave. Over 40 years later, he choked up as he began to recount the events of the day and could not continue the trauma caused by the violence he experienced and witnessed is still there at the core of his being.

Lessons from the past must be learned if we are to avoid them in the future. This act will strengthen the powers of statutory and non-statutory inquiries, enabling them to do their job to get to the heart of the matter. I welcome it, and I urge this House to support its

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passing. My Lords, at this stage in a

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My Lords, at this stage in a debate, it's almost all been said, but some things need to be said but some things need to be said more than once, so forgive me. Nearly 37 years ago, 97 Liverpool Nearly 37 years ago, 97 Liverpool fans were unlawfully killed at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield. 14 years ago, the Hillsborough Independent panel published its report. 13 years ago, the High Court quashed the original inquest verdict of accidental death ten years ago.

At the second inquest, the jury returned a determination of unlawful killing. Eight years ago, the then Home Secretary commissioned a report on how we could learn from the families experiences so that their pain and suffering would never be repeated. Those are not my words, but those of the author of that report, Bishop James Jones, to whom tribute has already been paid. Today he presided over the independent panel and he entitled his new report with the powerful words already quoted today, the Patronising disposition of unaccountable power.

Very powerful words. The independent panel had listened to the families and analysed the documentary evidence in great detail. They had discovered three things which had not been revealed in previous inquiries. First, that the families had been treated with an astonishing lack of sympathy and compassion in the arrangements made and in their interactions with the police. Seemingly bent on blaming the victims. Second, that numerous police witness statements had been altered to tell the story the police force wanted to tell.

And third, that many of the victims might have survived had the response of the police and ambulance services been less chaotic. Among the learnings from Bishop James report was the need for this bill. We shouldn't need it, but we do. One of the reasons for this is undoubtedly the patronising disposition that he referred to, that the families and the fans didn't need to be taken seriously or even treated with basic humanity. But another reason is the extreme defensiveness, which can be shown by public authorities when bad things happen.

And I'm afraid that this is partly, at least because of the fear of being held liable in the courts, the courts in which I served for so long. Yet early recognition of the truth can often prevent the need for long, costly and heartbreaking legal proceedings. So we need to change the mindset. We need to change the culture, the duties of candour and assistance in this bill have the potential positively to change the culture of state institutions by discouraging defensiveness and encouraging transparency from the outset, which should lead to earlier answers, earlier learning and earlier accountability.

And this is not just about writing past wrongs, it's also about learning lessons and preventing future harms. If investigations have access to the information they need, then the truth can emerge more quickly. This is not only fairer for victims and families, but also important for public sector in the. In the future, it should also build confidence in state institutions, confidence, which has been seriously eroded by a number of scandals not only Hillsborough but also many others, which we all know about now but didn't at the time.

Many mentioned. Today, when institutions are open, honest and forthcoming, accountability is strengthened and trust is rebuilt, and none of those institutions should be wholly exempt from these duties. None of these institutions are immune from the patronising disposition of unaccountable power, so they shouldn't be immune from the correctives in this bill. But of course, there should be protection for information which is sensitive on national security grounds, for the safety of public officials or otherwise privileged or immune from disclosure under existing law.

And it's my understanding, along with that of the Other place and others who have contributed to this debate, that this bill achieves those objectives. As a former member of the Law Commission, I also welcome part three of the bill, which broadly implements the Commission's recommendations to replace the common law offence of misconduct in public office as recently as 2020. For someone whose first law reform proposal on the abolition of blasphemy was only implemented some 23 years later, this is remarkably quickly, and I welcome it.

Yes. Can I end by paying tribute to the Hillsborough Law Now campaign, who've worked so hard to bring about this much needed reform, and who have some very sensible suggestions for improvement, which have, many of which have been referred to today. I hope that these will be taken seriously, but let's not make our efforts to achieve the very best become the

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enemy of achieving the very good. It is an honour to follow the distinguished lady Hale in this distinguished lady Hale in this debate, and I too, am conscious, as she said, that most things have she said, that most things have probably been said so far. But nonetheless, this is such important legislation. I think it's really legislation. I think it's really crucial that those who want to participate in it, and that's why I continue to make my contribution. continue to make my contribution.

And I want to start, too, by paying tribute to the families, because without them, without them, we wouldn't be having this debate here today. The disaster that occurred at Hillsborough was not a natural disaster or an accident. It was caused by the failure of police officers at every level to do their job and ensure that the funds were safe. And that failure, as we've heard, was compounded in the subsequent decades by deliberate, repeated lying and cover up by the police, by the abject failure of the judiciary, courts and lawyers to uncover the truth, and by the terrible complicity of parts of the media and one newspaper in particular.

In fabricating stories to vilify the fans and sustain the lie that they themselves were to blame. My Lords, I can recall immediately what I was doing on the 15th of April 1989, when the radio broadcast a newsflash that a major incident was unfolding at the stadium. My husband's two younger brothers were amongst the Liverpool fans at that game, and like many other families, we were desperate for news and watched on television the chaotic and heartrending scenes as fans themselves rushed onto the pitch with make do stretchers, but no sign for a long time of any police officers or emergency workers.

And so began that day what was to be decades of fighting for justice, to clear the names of the fans and to make accountable those who were truly responsible. The response of state institutions and organisations to the Hillsborough disaster has been an absolute scandal. And having finally got the truth, not through the courts but through Bishop James Jones and the Hillsborough Independent panel, we may have expected that lessons would have been learned. But instead, as we've also heard today, we've since had the horizon scandal, Grenfell, grooming gangs, infected blood and other further evidence of institutionalised corruption.

Cover up, failure to expose injustice and protect victims. My Lords, almost 30 years after Hillsborough, I had personal experience of this culture. In 2017, the then mayor of Greater Manchester, now the Prime Minister, established two local independent inquiries. The first was into the response of the emergency services on the night of the Manchester Arena bomb and was led by our departed colleague, Lord Kerslake. The other was into the BBC allegations that police and local authorities had failed to investigate and protect the young victims of child sexual exploitation.

As the then deputy mayor for Greater Manchester for police, crime and fire, I chair the steering groups for both of those inquiries and both were severely hampered by the intransigence of every public service the police, fire and rescue local authorities. So Bob came to see me on many occasions to try and unlock the resistance to providing information until we had a new chief Constable some years later, when the culture did begin to change, the process was tortuous, protracted and strangled by legal machinations.

Even elected councillors. Some of them were more concerned with reputational damage to their councils than exposing injustice in behalf of on behalf of the victims who were, of course, their electorate. And there's a common thread here, isn't there, that organisational reputation has counted for more than truth, accountability, transparency and justice for victims and the public. So it's very important that the measures in this bill apply equally to all inquiries, including those instigated locally and to elected representatives where they have a public responsibility.

My Lords, I think it's something of an indictment, and colleagues have said as much today that this bill is necessary

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But necessary. It undoubtedly is, and I fully support all the measures. But we have to ask measures. But we have to ask ourselves, how is it that public officials could lie? The judiciary officials could lie? The judiciary be so incurious that newspapers can fabricate stories? And the answer, fabricate stories? And the answer, of course, as we've heard today and I agree, lies in culture. So while this bill is necessary, it is not of itself sufficient unless it drives fundamental change in the culture of the state, its organisations and the people who work in it.

It must change not only behaviour but also mindset. It must inculcate a culture in which our public officials, our organisations and their leaders actually feel themselves, that they're first and foremost. Responsibility is to the public, to service users, to victims and to families. There is much to commend in this bill. As we've heard today, there are issues to be resolved, and there are also some areas for improvement, and I support the calls we've already heard for command responsibility.

The head of an organisation must be personally responsible for compliance, better protection for whistleblowers, strengthening the powers and resources of the independent Public advocate and Lady May's contribution here to explain how this may actually be of greater assistance to many members of the public than a formal inquiry. And then finally, removing the requirement to prove harm from the offence of misleading the public. It also has wide ranging implications, I believe, for the recruitment of senior leaders who we recruit and how we recruit them, and for training throughout the public sector.

But by placing transparency at the heart of public accountability and reinforcing the expectation of proactive disclosure rather than reputational management, the bill has the potential, the potential, at least, to transform the relationship between the state and the citizen and begin to rebuild public trust in our public services. Lord Purvis. I would like to warmly welcome this bill and pay tribute to all those who fought so hard to achieve it. And if I may immediately pick up the point just made so forcibly by the noble Baroness, Lady Lady Hughes of Stretford, the question is, how are we going to make this.

The change envisaged by this bill effective? It's undoubtedly necessary, but not yet in itself sufficient. Although this is indeed a milestone, we are not yet at a destination. The destination everybody wishes to see of deep cultural change. How are we going to get there? And I would like to confine myself to just two aspects of this challenge. One is public inquiries, and the other is how to make the duty of candour effective on public inquiries.

Astonishingly, we have no fewer than 26 public inquiries currently going on in this country at the moment. But as the Institute of Government report of December 2nd, 2005 pointed out, that system of public inquiries is itself suffering from systemic problems, including cost delay and failure to deliver change. As Your Lordship's own Statutory Inquiries committee reported in 2024 in particular, there is a failure to follow up on public inquiry recommendations, and that may mean that avoidable mistakes are constantly repeated.

So I would agree with the Institute of Government that suggests that this bill is a first step in the reform of our public inquiry system. In particular, I would suggest there should be a clear system of consistently following up on inquiry recommendations, including by a committee of both houses or, failing that committee of this House, so that everyone is clear what steps are being taken to avert future tragedy and in particular, if recommendations are not implemented, then why not? So turning to the second aspect, how do we make the duty of candour effective? It's all very well to pass a bill.

It's all very well to threaten the criminal prosecution, but how are we actually going to change the culture in the debate in the other House? The Right Honourable Sir Jeremy Hunt lamented that he himself introduced into the NHS a duty of culture more than ten years ago. And he pointed out that that change in itself has had very little effect. We've still seen a series of national health scandals, the Nottingham maternity scandal being only one of a number of examples.

Similarly, there's already a statutory duty of candour on the police. But incidents such as the recent Maccabees incident in Birmingham does not suggest that that duty of candour is yet particularly effective. And as the noble Lord Lord Bichard pointed out, just having codes is not enough. We've already got plenty of codes. So what are we going to do about this? In. I suggest a to your Lordships that the. The changing the culture is going to be a matter of leadership.

As many of your Lordships have pointed out. But it's not going to be easy, particularly as the noble Lord Lord Arbuthnot reminded us, we are dealing with the complexities of human nature and loyalty to one's institution loyalty, hope, fear of losing one's job, inability to accept that one is itself at at at fault. These are all factors that play into the problem we are addressing. I have no immediate answer, but just 1 or 2 questions.

Should we build into the system not only the threat of a criminal prosecution, but some better recognition, some better reward that integrity and truthfulness and honesty is very much the the right thing to do, that people start to think that they get the pat on the back, as it were. They get the they get public approbation, they get praise. A duty of praise, if you like, as well as a duty of candour is the. Is the other side of the coin.

Does our own system discourage. Candour? Is a culture of blame? Has a culture of blame gone too far? Should we. Is our system too adversarial? Are we trying to pillory people when we should be trying to learn lessons for the future? All these are very important questions. My Lords, I fear that a criminal prosecution of some criminal prosecutions may indeed be necessary in order to make the point. But just passing the bill in itself is not.

It's very necessary, but it's not going to quite get us there. And a great deal of thought needs to go into how we actually manage the psychology of this situation. I would suggest, my Lords, to ensure that this bill actually brings about change and to monitor progress, that a committee of this House undertakes. Post-legislative scrutiny. Not more than three years after Royal Assent, so that we get a good view of what is going on, and we continue to chase and pursue the very important change that is necessary.

This is a very good bill, my Lords, but whether it turns out to be a great bill depends on the follow through in which government and Parliament, and in particular play.

19:48

Lord Carlile of Berriew (Crossbench)

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I support the Bill and the purposes behind it. We know that purposes behind it. We know that the Bill is a priority for the Labour government and in particular for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. But more importantly, it's important to the families of those who have lost loved ones at disasters, not least Hillsborough. I've, of course, endorsed the tributes paid to the campaigners who have led to us being here debating the bill today. My concern is with the bill's reach and specifically whether it will reach the financial regulators.

Make no mistake, when financial services go wrong, it causes real harm. In the words of the noble Lady Baroness Hale pain and suffering, it destroys lives. And there's examples of people who have lost their lives because of the harm which has been caused them in the area of finance. So I have two problems where I'd like more clarity for my noble friend, the Minister. First, there is a need to be clear about what counts as a public authority for the purposes of the bill.

The definition in schedule two terms. In the end, on whether a body has functions of a public nature. From my perspective, to take one, the Financial Conduct Authority plainly exercise such functions. It's also inform a company limited by guarantee, as are the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. So I'd like to ask the Minister to confirm in the debate that these bodies will be included within the scope of the act, as it's worded at present, or if it doesn't, we will need to return to the issue at Committee stage.

It may well be that some functions of these bodies are within scope and others aren't, but we need to be clear. So the definition, though, of what counts as a public authority is the lesser of the two concerns. The larger one relates to schedule one. Now the duty of candour and assistance does not operate at large. It relates to the inquiries and investigations as set out in schedule one. Inquiries under the Inquiries Act, inquests and so on, which doesn't include the my areas of concern.

But there is the power in the section to include such further investigations, as may be specified in regulations. Now, regulation failure in financial services is almost never examined in any of the ways that have been specified in schedule two. The harm is financial rather than physical, so it produces no inquest. And in truth, successive governments have declined to establish statutory inquiries where they are plainly needed. But what we do have in financial services might be, for example, an independent investigation directed by the Treasury under section 77 of the Financial Services Act 2012, which was the route used to initiate the London Capital and Finance inquiry and the inquiry into Connor, or the report from the Complaints Commissioner under part six of the same act, or an inquiry by the Treasury Committee.

These don't appear in schedule one, so there's bill. Central duty would not apply to the mechanisms by which financial regulators are, in practice examined unless is going to be specified in regulation. So how are the how and when are these regulations going to make and and what consultation will there be on what's covered in those regulations? The thing is that it wouldn't be important if if the record were reassuring. Regrettably, there are well-founded concerns about delay, about the completeness of the material provided, and about the difficulty of establishing who had been responsible for what.

When we come across financial malfeasance now, those are exactly the failings that the bill is intended to address. Investors who lost money through a whole series of scandals, as I say, Connor Blackmore, bond, Woodford, those who advised the transfer out of the British Steel pension Scheme, they will recognise the description of what this bill is intended to address. Now, I'm not asking for financial regulators to be singled out. I am asking them to be treated in the same way as any other body exercising this sort of statutory inquiry.

Two things would resolve my concerns. First, a clear answer on the definition and secondly, an undertaking that the power in to include additional bases for initiating investigation, that it will be used to specify problems which have arisen in the area of financial services. I suspect that we will need to return to this issue at committee, but I look forward to my noble friend the

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minister's response. Rewritten chunks. Of my speech this afternoon because other people have said what because other people have said what I was going to say, and they've said it better, and I do support said it better, and I do support the bill. I do hope that the government will listen to some of the amendments that are going to be brought forward, because I think it can be improved, and it seems that noble Lords from all around the noble Lords from all around the House agree that this is a stain on the country, when families who have suffered so much should then actually have to fight the state for the truth and and for and and and for understanding that they did wrong.

Because really public institutions should tell the police even or even particularly when the truth is uncomfortable and Hillsborough should have changed this culture. But again and again, what we're seeing is the same instinct, the same culture to protect the institution rather than the people. It's failed. And the Hillsborough Law now campaign have all tribute to them for the fact that they have pushed so hard and made us listen. And in fact, many of us have been calling this the Hillsborough bill from the start.

But of course, it goes much wider than Hillsborough. We've heard the incredible losses that people experienced. But there is the Post Office scandal. There's the infected blood scandal, there's the Grenfell scandal, the Manchester Arena scandal, scandal after scandal, where institutions care more about protecting their reputation than they do about hurting the people that have been impacted by them. Now, this bill will be an important step in changing that culture, but only if it's tough, and only if it understands that you don't just change a culture with words.

There has to be a lot of processes that really work inside it. For example, making something a criminal offence is not on its own going to change that culture. I welcome clause ten and its duty on public authorities to promote and maintain ethical conduct, but that needs to mean more than just another policy document. It does need leadership and it needs proper monitoring alongside practical codes of practice. And the question should not simply be has the law been complied with? It should be has the culture changed and the Bill rightly creates consequences when a public authority fails to meet its duty of candour, including the possibility of financial penalties.

But if a public authority is fined, it's actually the taxpayer who pays. So how on earth is that a deterrent? We really have to rethink these things. We need to be clear about who's accountable and when they're serious institutional failure. And I'm not suggesting that every institutional failure is the personal responsibility of a chief executive, but where those at the top are responsible, there needs to be a clear line of accountability. And this obviously would apply to water companies as much as any other sort of organisation.

So codes of practice mean that people can speak and they can be judged on what they're saying. I also would like to emphasise the role of whistleblowing. I've had experience of whistleblower myself. I might, if I have time at the end, I might talk about my little brush with a public institution that lied and distorted things to me. But it does show, I think, that almost every public institution will hide its wrongdoing if it possibly can. And of course, all of this raises the wider question of what about politicians? How are we actually going to pass a law that doesn't include ourselves? Why is it that everybody else has to actually tell the truth, but not elected politicians and not peers? I think this is very wrong.

It is wrong to pass a bill that doesn't include us. I'm not questioning parliamentary privilege. I accept that we can protect political debate, but we have to draw a line around deliberate deception if we're prepared to demand candour from public servants, surely we should be prepared to ask it of ourselves. And also, do we have the legal capacity to deliver this? The government anticipates an increase in legally aided inquest cases from a few hundred to potentially over 11,000 a year now, hopefully, this will be offset by the fact that the duty of candour might mean swift justice, as opposed to long drawn out cases.

That would be a really positive result. And I would also like to raise the issue of university life, because that really ought to be covered in the bill as well. And I'm not sure which bits are covered and which are not. How are the duties of candour and ethical conduct work in practice, in higher education? And of course, what happens after an inquiry or inquest? What's the point of establishing the truth if nobody is responsible for making sure that changes actually happen? Now, my experience with being lied to by a public institution was being lied to by the met back in 2012, somebody in my team at the London Assembly suggested that I ask for my my record with the police.

Other people have been doing it, and the police very kindly sent me a report. They had me on their domestic extremist database, which obviously for a rabid green like me was was useful notoriety. I really didn't mind at all. And there were only 17 entries on this report, and every single entry was something I'd been boasting about. I mean, either in the newsletters or on social media. It was speaking to a rally in Trafalgar Square. It was going on a bike ride with some protesters, that sort of thing.

And I laughed at this. I thought it was so trivial. Why on earth have I spent all those years trying to compile a report on me when I was actually telling them what I was doing anyway? However, later. A whistleblower came forward and he told me that he had seen police officers. After I'd asked my report, he had seen them. In the same month, he saw three officers engaged in physically destroying a number of police records by shredding, and he believed all of those records related to me.

They were in excess of 30 reports. And one of these officers then began to electronically delete a number of police records from the police database. Again, he thought these records were of me and this whistleblower who had an absolutely miserable time afterwards within the met and finally left, said that he didn't become a police officer to monitor politicians or political parties, nor pay casual disregard to policy and procedure. So whistleblowers are people we have to protect very, very seriously.

We have to make sure that they are not driven out of their jobs by people who don't want to be reported on. I do I do very much support the bill, and I hope that we can amend it and

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make it much better. It's always a pleasure to follow the noble Ladies enlivening the noble Ladies enlivening contributions to our debates. May she go on boasting rightly. This Bill aims to ensure that the public service treats the public. It service treats the public. It serves with accountable candour and transparency. It's odd to feel that transparency. It's odd to feel that we need a bill to achieve that end. It is something that should happen naturally between the public service and the public it serves.

But of course we do, and we have had a number of bills which deal with public service conduct over the years. I'll mention another in a minute. The fact that it has taken 37 years to reach this necessary point is, as the noble Lord Lord Blunkett reflected, a severe and lasting lesson for all of us who've taken any part in the public service. Again, it shouldn't have to happen that way. And what worries me about this bill is not that we're enacting it.

I hope, because I'm very much in favour of the principle of the bill, but that we have done similar things before, not always with the success we expected, and we need to try and ensure that what emerges from this bill delivers success for its aims. There is no room for complacency in our support for this bill. I would commend to your Lordships if you haven't taken the time, just before you go to bed, because it would be good bedtime reading to read the long, very long title of this bill, because it illustrates in a few lines, intense lines, what we are trying to deal with here.

And it's not going to be an easy task. And I want to commend, as others have done, the extraordinary efforts of the Hillsborough families, their legal representatives, the horizon campaign and all those other campaigns that have been mentioned in at last, bringing a bill of this kind to the House. The previous legislation I wanted to refer to is this when I joined another place as a new MP in 1983, my baptism of fire was being put on the Standing Committee for what was then the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill pace 1984.

Pace 1984 made enormous changes, particularly seen by somebody like me who had been practising at the criminal bar for the previous 13 or 14 years, in the way in which the police behaved in trials, in investigations, and it had an ongoing effect into trials where the conduct of those trials was much more normal in the way it approached human behaviour. Judges were able not to conjure up directions to juries in which they were suggesting that police officers could remember all the content of a three hour interview of which they made.

And there are some of us here who've been through this process, of which they made notes the following day. And the answer was always, oh, we're trained to do that. So we can remember three hours of interview. So pace made an enormous change in the way in which criminal cases were conducted, but it didn't work in its entirety. One of the things that did work was the creation of codes of conduct and code. C to pace is an absolute epic example of the way in which the approach to litigation, in that case, criminal litigation, can be improved by demanding that the public service follows codes of conduct.

And I do welcome suggestions that have been made in this debate that there should be some codes of conduct which are envisaged by the legislation. Who drafts them may well be a matter for debate, which has already been raised. But even with pace, we had Hillsborough a case in which I happened to be involved in the later stages was the Cardiff three case, in which three men were convicted of a murder. They had absolutely nothing to do with. My involvement in the case was representing a young female prostitute who had been one of the false witnesses and was later prosecuted for her perjury.

She had the good sense to plead guilty, and it was possible to show that she should have a short sentence because of the outrageous behaviour of police who had virtually locked her up in a flat behind a police station in south Wales. The police were prosecuted, but they managed to get away with it because they concealed documents which were relevant to the trial, until it was too late to produce them because the judge had stopped the trial. That's one example of egregious behaviour by the public service.

Despite there being legislation that is supposed to prevent it. The horizon case, so eloquently spoken of by my old friend Lord Arbuthnot the horizon case, is another example. I prosecuted postmasters in the horizon. Some horizon cases. I was quite an experienced barrister by then. I was not told by anybody that there could be an iota of doubt about the computer material, which we were told as prosecutors provided cast iron evidence against the defendants. We have to bear in mind that we can make mistakes even after legislation of this, of that kind.

Two short points I want to mention national security. I'm one of two former independent reviewers of terrorism legislation who've spoken in this debate. I am I believe that what is provided in this bill is adequate, that it produces a solution to a very, very difficult equation. And nobody should underestimate the difficulty between national security, which, as my noble friend next to me told the House, is a very delicate thing, and the honesty of the public service. And it is very important that we enact that part of the bill.

And the other point I wanted to make is about inquests. I have appeared recently at an inquest in South Wales concerning a death which resulted from misbehaviour in the local mental health service. The internal inquiry was a disgrace. There were concealments of documents. People did not come forward to say what had happened. There had to be an inquest. It was conducted by an excellent deputy coroner. We must ensure that such inquests do continue in large numbers, and that the advocates who appear at those inquests are properly remunerated for the work they do, so that there is equality of arms.

In those cases. The independent public advocate, who is a brilliant person, cannot do it on her own. She will have to instruct lawyers to appear. She can't go to every inquest, but we must and we must make sure that those inquests are properly and fairly conducted in accordance with the spirit of

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this legislation. My Lords, it's a real honour to

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My Lords, it's a real honour to follow Lord Carlile. What I want to say has been said mostly, but still I rise to support this bill because it addresses one of the most important principle in public life important principle in public life that when the state is responsible for serving the public, it must for serving the public, it must also be accountable to the public. The lessons of Hillsborough are painful and profound that when things went wrong, institution closed, rank information was withheld, responsibility was deflected and bereaved families were left fighting for the truth.

That is why I particularly welcome the bill's duty of candour. Public authorities and public officials should have nowhere to hide. They should be required to act with transparency, frankness and honesty,

19:57

Lord Sahota (Labour)

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and to assist inquiries and investigation in finding the truth. investigation in finding the truth. The Bill also provides criminal sanction for serious breaches, which I wholeheartedly support as which I wholeheartedly support as well. This matters because accountability cannot simply mean blaming an institution. After the event. There must be responsibility event. There must be responsibility for the individual who makes decision or who withhold information. In my public life over the last 30 years, I have seen some incompetent people in charge of the important decision making, where their first instinct is to protect themselves, hiding behind institutions and their departments, saying.

And they are mostly saying that they are acting in the best public interest. I welcome the fact that this bill also challenges that culture. Of course, we must be careful when forming criminal law. The threshold must be high and nobody should face imprisonment merely for making an honest mistake. But when there is a serious wrongdoing, dishonesty or deliberate failure to uphold fundamental, fundamental responsibilities, there must be consequences. My Lords, I strongly. I also strongly welcome the principle of parity of representation.

This is about fairness. A bereaved family should not have, should not have to face a public authority equipped with lawyers and resources. While the family struggle to obtain equivalent representation, the ordinary citizen, the little man or a woman must have a genuine opportunity to challenge the machinery of the state. The Post Office Horizon scandal demonstrated why this bill is so urgently needed. When thousands of postmasters were wrongly accused of stealing money from the Post Office.

While serious problem with a computer system were known about. And yet those past postmasters were left to carry the blame. The Windrush is another example. Independent review found that this was not a simply bureaucratic bad luck, but a profound institutional failure. The hostile environment with in which this policy developed had devastating consequences for the hundreds of law abiding citizens. British citizens, many of whom had lived here since their childhood. Some lost their jobs, some lost their livelihood, and in some cases they were wrongly removed from this country.

What happened to them was reprehensible. I wish there had been such a law then to ensure that those responsible, including the Home Office of the day, could properly be held to account. Then there was a Covid 19 pandemic and a controversy surrounding public procurement, including the so-called VIP lane. Billions of pounds of public money was committed in an extraordinary circumstances, and a serious question have subsequently been raised about the value for money, transparency and accountability.

I hope, I hope this government will pursue every opportunity to recover public money where it was improperly spent. Finally, my Lords, finally, I hope this Bill will ensure the power of the state is matched by an equal obligation to be accountable to the people it serves, not leaving the families begging for information and truth. For those reasons, my Lords, I strongly support this bill and look forward to helping strengthening it as it proceeds through this House. Thank you.

20:01

Lord Rennard (Liberal Democrat)

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Yeah. >> More than Hillsborough, but we would not be here today. But for the unlawful killings of the unlawful killings of Hillsborough 37 years ago, it must be enacted without further be enacted without further unnecessary delay, but still with significant scrutiny to help make sure that it achieves its aims. As I said in our Hillsborough debate last November, it's welcome that the legislation will apply beyond public bodies to private bodies and contractors delivering public functions, but I fear that this principle will be undermined if subcontractors are not also included, nor will it be as effective as it should be.

If we fail to strengthen the whistleblowing protections so that breaches of the duty of candour cannot be buried, this may require the creation of an independent office of the whistleblower and other measures to ensure statutory protection for those who do exercise candour and who expose wrongdoing, perhaps amongst colleagues. I speak as someone from Liverpool, very mindful of how the deaths of the blameless victims and the lives about them affected my city. It took great courage and determination in the face of establishment cover ups to finally get the truth to be accepted beyond Merseyside, and to bring about this Bill, but it should never have required a change in the law to make police and public officials tell the truth.

A change of culture is necessary, as well as changes in the law. My fear now is that the bill's promise of accountability may be weakened by fragmented codes and inconsistent enforcement. We will achieve much through establishing the duty of candour, the provision supporting participation in inquiries and investigations, and the proposed offences. The Bill requires public authorities to promote ethical conduct. It permits authority level codes and disciplinary consequences for employees, but therefore risks of ineffectiveness.

If there are different codes with different wording and different complaint routes. A citizen's entitlement to honesty, accurate records, prompt response and correction of errors should not depend upon which authority is involved, nor should it depend upon which professional regulator happens to have jurisdiction, or whether the people responsible remain in employment. When issues are finally examined, the criminal provisions properly require criminal proof, but a criminal investigation cannot be the routine response to every serious ethical failure.

There needs to be proper investigation of conduct that is too serious for a merely internal response, but which would not properly be addressed by criminal prosecution. That is why the proposal made by Andrew Devine's family deserve close attention. Andrew survived for more than 32 years with the catastrophic injuries he suffered at Hillsborough, and he was ultimately recognised as the 97th person unlawfully killed. His family's experiences extended across decades of interaction with public bodies, healthcare regulators and the legal system.

The family have therefore asked that it be one enforceable code of conduct for all public officials with significant sanctions, including financial penalties for non-compliance. The bill could include a core statutory code so that no public body should be able to fall below a common minimum standard. The core duties should include honesty candle, proper record keeping, timely disclosure, correction of known error, cooperation with lawful scrutiny, reasons for material decisions and fair treatment of affected people. An effective system also requires independent enforcement.

An authority implicated in institutional failure should not always remain the sole investigator and judge of its own compliance. A proportionate commission accountable to Parliament could triage complaints, refer suitable cases to existing regulators or employers. It could independently determine serious, repeated or systematic breaches. Its purpose would not be to punish every mistake. Advice, correction, apology training or warning may be sufficient. In many cases, public censure, a financial penalty or time limited disqualification should be reserved for serious or persistent misconduct and imposed only through fair procedure.

Accountability should not disappear merely because a person resigns, retires or transfers before a matter is concluded. We should therefore ensure that the Bill creates not simply a series of codes, but one intelligible baseline with credible consequences for breaching it and a fair, independent system capable of changing conduct before more families of victims must spend decades fighting to establish the

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truth. My Lords, the speech I'm going

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My Lords, the speech I'm going to give this evening is one I wish I didn't have to. I didn't feel obliged to because I'm going to obliged to because I'm going to deal with elements of the bill and the debate which relate to what the debate which relate to what Lord Bishop raised originally, but had been covered by many other noble Lords in different parts of noble Lords in different parts of the House. Baroness Stuart and also the question of whistle blowing.

But it's how you establish the process of candour at a lower level within any part of public service, because the reality is, this bill should never have been necessary in the first place. And the two cases I'm going to cite are examples of how, at a much lower level, things go wrong. But people believe that they can cover things up. And I'm in the fortunate position in the first example of being able to say I have followed the processes in both cases, but in the case that the first case I'm going to cite, Lord Lemos was present when I was with officials only a few months ago, saying, Will you please answer the questions which I've been raising for four years? Four years ago, I, I introduced the ballot secrecy bill Lord Rennard gave me advice that I should seek counsel's opinion through the Electoral Commission, which they.

And I did. The counsel's opinion was provided in August 2022. I've got a copy of it here. There was only one other organisation that was provided with a copy of that, and that was the officials who were handling the ballot secrecy. Bill and Lord Keen touched on the matter earlier in relation to advice to Ministers. A whistleblower provided me with the copy of the advice that was given to Ministers on the 29th of September 2022, a month after the counsel's opinion had been provided to the Electoral Commission, to myself and to the officials in the department.

So what did the advice from the officials say to the Minister? And I quote, The Electoral Commission has obtained counsel's advice to seek to bring clarity on this issue, i.e. the

20:10

Lord Hayward (Conservative)

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question of whether the legislation was necessary in it or not and have shared it with Lord Hayward. They

20:10

Lord Rennard (Liberal Democrat)

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shared it with Lord Hayward. They conveniently omitted the fact that they had had the advice, because

20:11

Lord Hayward (Conservative)

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they had had the advice, because I've established that I asked to meet officials over and over again. meet officials over and over again. I asked questions in Statutory Instrument debates, never got a Instrument debates, never got a reply. And then it goes on to say, and I quote again, we've been given some headline information, hadn't been given some headline information. They had been given a full copy of counsel's opinion. Now, only a few weeks ago, as I indicated, I had made another effort.

And during the recess, I'd actually communicated with the current minister's officials to say that I was going to raise this. But that is precisely what we are facing here. And what is Lord Bellamy and others have identified. We shouldn't have to be dealing with. It's the belief that people at a lower level, oh, they'll give up in the end. And I've been looking around the chamber and I've been thinking, how many of us as members of Parliament dealt with cases when we actually didn't believe the officials that we were dealing with, but there was just no way of finding a solution in this particular case.

What I find interesting about this ministerial advice is there's no name at the bottom. There's loads of names of those who'd be received on the right round who will receive it, but there is no signature. I would recommend that all advice to Ministers should be signed off by one official, because that would make that person responsible. In terms of the duty of candour. The other example, sadly, is even closer to home. Or it couldn't happen here. Well, a number of noble Lords will remember that I pursued over a long period the cost of traffic marshals, which involved millions of pounds.

Finally, a fair number of traffic marshals. And I notice one noble Lady nodding because she sat through my evidence at Finance Committee, and I'll come back to that in a minute. But I was seeking to establish how much we were wasting in terms of money on the traffic marshals, which were not legally required. And as I explained to the Finance Committee, I was actually director of safety in a major industrial establishment, employing 3500 people. And I did know what the legal responsibilities were.

I was provided on December the 6th, 2023, having asked for the cost of traffic marshals, the figure was given to me in an email from officials in this building. Traffic marshal would cost £65,613.50. So I told them out of courtesy, told the officials, out of courtesy, that I was putting down a question and I would be drawing to the press the attention of the answer, which I expected to be that. A few days later I went to a meeting with officials and I was told, oh no, it's not possible to calculate it.

I said, well, how is it possible to send me an email giving me a sum? Oh no, it's not possible. I said, well, have I missed praised the written question. Oh no, it's not possible. It's not possible. Now, that was as far as I was concerned, a clear attempt to hide embarrassing data from the public eye because we were costing the nation millions. But I waited. I was told it wasn't possible. 15 months later, in a paper given to the Finance Committee, the cost of each individual marshal was identified.

So we have to ask ourselves, even with our own organisations, do we actually demand a duty of candour adequately? Yeah. Here, my Lords, I should declare an interest. I think I'm the Unremunerated non-executive chair of the trustees of the Leicester Law Centre, and perhaps relevant to something I say in a

20:15

Lord Bach (Labour)

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moment. I like really everyone else I've listened to well, warmly I've listened to well, warmly welcomes this bill and would like to see it in force as soon as to see it in force as soon as possible. My main regret is that it has taken just so long to legislate has taken just so long to legislate changes that should have been law. Years and years ago. The yawning Years and years ago. The yawning gap between the parties that inquiries and inquests have been obvious to anyone who wanted to notice for a long time that these changes are last to become embedded in statute is.

And here I know I'm repeating what many have said due to the strength, patience and courage of all those who have fought so long and against so many obstacles set in their path. I mean, obviously, first and foremost, those who lost family and friends. Now, nearly 40 years ago at Hillsborough, then of course, those whoever they are, and there many of them who realise the monstrosity of what had happened at Hillsborough and the monstrosity of the ensuing cover up, and who remain determined to see justice for those killed and justice for future generations.

I want to congratulate the government for putting these changes, this change, these changes, into their manifesto and for bringing it to Parliament as a government bill. However, to praise and support a bill is not the same thing as saying it is perfect in its present form. I really want this Act of Parliament to work, but I have to confess that for me, at the moment, the proposed legal aid scheme for inquests seems to me to be far from satisfactory and, if persevered with, might seriously affect how well it works in practice.

And it's how it works in practice that matters. I don't want to be misunderstood. I obviously welcome the wide increase in the future availability of legal aid for victims of disasters or state related deaths at inquests. The obligation, which means victims can effectively participate in inquests and the abolition of the means and merits tests, is long, long overdue. It's been argued for years that the present position is deeply unfair, not least by the outstanding Deborah Coles of the Inquest organisation.

Many reports, many over the years have made the argument, including the Commission on the Right to Justice, that 11 years ago, I should say nine years ago, I was privileged to chair argued such changes should happen as soon as possible. Many other reports have said the same. Now, at long last, it's happening. Quote, addressing any imbalance of powers, transparency and fairness as the rather excellent explanatory notes to this Bill claim. However, there is some concern that the proposed Legal Aid Fee scheme will frankly not be fit to meet the expected increase in relevant inquest cases.

The estimate is that they will grow from around 200 to 400 to over 11,000. I personally find that extraordinary, but I would like to find out what that's based on, but that there will be an increase. There can be little doubt. Will there be enough lawyers? To do this, these important cases, and will there be training for those who want to do this work? But a crucial part of this potential problem is the question as to whether the proposed legal aid scheme is generous enough to attract the skilled lawyers necessary to make the changes work.

This issue arose last year at a meeting held in this building by the all party Group on Access to Justice, at which the then Secretary of State, David Lammy, was a speaker. And it's a position that's been argued for in documents, briefings that we've received, both from the law, law, Law Society and the Bar Council. My Lords, another issue is to be settled, and it's been raised already today, is at what stage legal aid for victims arise arises.

Often. It is fairly obvious early on that there will be interested parties involved many months before the inquest commences, even though their involvement isn't formally announced for a long time. How long should victims have to pay for their lawyers, who they need? At an early stage before the legal aid scheme comes into force? One last point and is this legal aid resources are, of course, limited. There is a concern shared by a number of people who work in this area that these changes may result, may result in some of the other legal aid spend being decreased unless the government takes action, ensure and ensures this doesn't happen.

I'm referring, of course, to what is vital spend on early advice, housing law, benefits, debt and other crucial areas. This government has taken some desperately needed action in the last two years, but there's no doubt that the ravages caused by the outrageous and ill thought through legal aid, Sentencing and Protection of Offenders Act, the LASPO act have and still continue to be disastrous for this vital sector. I would end my remarks by asking the Minister whether he'd be good enough to meet me and others who are concerned about this aspect of the bill.

Important aspect of the bill for discussion concerning these issues. I'm grateful to him. I repeat, of course, my support for this bill and hope for its implementation soon.

20:22

Lord Carter of Haslemere (Crossbench)

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My Lords, coming towards the end >> My Lords, coming towards the end of this debate, I'm not going to repeat points made in the truly excellent speeches we've heard excellent speeches we've heard across the House today. So I'm going to focus on a slightly different aspect, which is different aspect, which is nonetheless very relevant, I think, to the spirit of this bill and merits, in my view, becoming part of the letter of it. The Bill will impose a duty on authorities to act with candour, transparency and frankness in their dealings with inquiries.

They will be statutorily required to act with accountability and openness. The Bill applies to government Ministers and government departments, but there's one respect in which the government will not be required to act with such candour, transparency and accountability, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. Despite the vast sums of taxpayers money spent on statutory and non-statutory inquiries, the government is not required to be open with the public and give reasons if they decide not to implement inquiry recommendations.

The UK has spent at least £1.5 billion on completed inquiries since 1990, with active ongoing inquiries continuing to cost taxpayers upwards of £200 million a year. These are eye watering sums of taxpayers money. How can a government be free to spend millions or sometimes hundreds of millions of taxpayers money on an inquiry initiated because of public concern, and then be under no obligation even to even to give reasons to the public for rejecting its recommendations? The Nao has estimated that 55% of inquiry recommendations are not accepted by the government or somewhat Equivocally were, quote, accepted in principle but with no recorded follow up.

This is extraordinary in itself. When an inquiry's recommendations are made on the basis of months or years of painstaking evidence gathering to establish the facts and hear from experts. But for the government then to be able to hold back the reasons for declining to accept the inquiry's recommendations demonstrates a lack of accountability, which is entirely at odds with this Public Office Accountability Bill. Now before us compare recommendations in prevention of future deaths reports issued by coroners. The government is under a statutory duty to respond within 56 days and to give reasons.

If they choose not to implement them, like inquest inquiries are also often initiated because of events which have resulted in fatalities, so there's no good reason why there should be this disparity with coroner's prevention of future deaths reports. Our Solicitor General seems to be of a similar mind since it Report stage in the other place, just a week or so before he was appointed, he tabled amendments to the bill requiring a review of the merits of new independent oversight body to collate, analyse and follow up on the conclusions and recommendations of inquiries and inquests to improve implementation of them.

As he said, quote, at present there is a critical gap in accountability between the issuing of a report or recommendation and its eventual implementation without candour and transparency in how public authorities respond to and act on findings and recommendations. These costly, lengthy legal processes are futile, he said. In 2024, the House of Lords Select Committee on Inquiries, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, made a similar recommendation and suggested a new joint Select Committee of Parliament, which would publish inquiry reports and government responses and monitor the implementation of recommendations.

It's a point mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy. That committee also recommended the government be under a duty to give reasons for not implementing inquiry recommendations in a bill about openness and accountability in relation to inquiries. The duty to give such reasons should be front and centre. The public should, at the very least, be entitled to know why the government have not implemented particular recommendations. It's not asking much.

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My Lords, the noble Lord Carter of Haslemere and earlier Lord Bellamy raises a very important point. There's no point as passing a law in which you have to tell the truth at inquiries. If, then when truth at inquiries. If, then when the inquiry is conclude, nothing happens, you know, that's the happens, you know, that's the problem with just passing laws. And I wanted to just note that one of

20:27

Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)

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I wanted to just note that one of maybe surprisingly, one speech by the former Prime Minister and now former MP Keir Starmer that really I found moving and stirring. Related to this Hillsborough bill. He said it's a law for the victims of all the countless injustices over the years suffered by working people at the hands of those who were supposed to serve them. And I really, genuinely choked up. He went on to name check horizon Grenfell, infected blood, grooming gangs and Windrush, and how depressing that we can all think of so many more examples when truth and justice have been concealed behind the power of the closed ranks of the state.

And the powerful speeches we've heard today, I think, reflects this. The idea of politicians admitting to this, and even compelling public bodies and officials to be held accountable for state related harms to ordinary people just feels momentous. And yet I have some qualms about overclaiming and hype, proclaiming

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that the law will really shift the balance of power and will lead to a culture change Per se. As other noble Lords

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Per se. As other noble Lords have noted, it all feels more serious than that because, to be frank, I think we are in the midst frank, I think we are in the midst of something of a democratic crisis. Over the recess, I read the UK Over the recess, I read the UK Extremism and Democratic Resilience Centre's report Britain Under Strain. I know holiday reading, but anyway, the report details the data showing a chronic erosion of trust in the state that reached historically low levels, and notes that a lack of faith in effective governance is deeply embedded in public opinion across left and right and all age groups.

Shockingly, a growing number of the populace believe that the foundational bargain between the state and citizens is failing. Research and polling shows 61% believe the social contract that stabilising web of reciprocal obligations. The whole society together is broken. Only 23% think it still works. And it's the state that is in breach of contract, not the public. That perception extends across demographic and socioeconomic metrics. In other words, disillusion and collapse of trust have become mainstreamed. And is it any wonder we might all argue which example was the straw that broke the camel's back? But for me, it was following the oral evidence phase of the Nottingham inquiry.

What a display of evasion, incompetence, even indifference. Multiple state agencies who had contact with a high risk, non-compliant patient with a history of violence, Valdo Calocane and somehow malice failed to keep him under effective supervision, discharged him unmedicated into the community, failed to execute a live warrant, and on and on. And that allowed him to murder Grace O'malley-kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates. It's unbearable that these were preventable deaths, and it is unbelievable that the exposure of the details, the answers swerved, the interpretation of the legalistic double speak only became public because the victims families took to social media to tell us what happened in the inquiry.

And a special shout out to Emma Webber, who gave painstakingly daily filmed updates of the horrors prised open begrudgingly in that inquiry. And I still can't believe that no one has lost their jobs over it all. But while I despise those weasely words that we hear, lessons will be learned. They rarely are. There were actually lessons here from that inquiry about how parliamentary deliberations and the small print of of laws that we pass can impact on operational decisions in the real world, sometimes with unintended consequences.

So, for example, in the 2025 Themis Homicide review into care, it was found that NHS staff were acutely conscious of the legislative debate surrounding the mental health Bill about the alleged disproportionate use of coercive detention of black and Afro-Caribbean patients. So after Calocane tried to break into a neighbour's flat, one doctor was leaning towards detention. But the inquiry counsel noted the clinical team, worried over representation of young black men being sectioned, referencing the bill and close monitoring in the community instead.

Hours later, Calocane broke into another flat and a woman was so terrified she jumped out of the window, sustaining horrible injuries. So a cautionary note here. However much we broadly support the spirit of this legislation, and we all do, we do have an obligation to raise critical concerns and ensure drafting and terminology is tight and clear and unambiguous, and we should not be overly rushed. We must ensure those guardrails so we don't over criminalise the Law Society, as if there is a risk that institutions keen to avoid criminal liability may resort to data dumping.

And we have to ensure that the criminal offence of misleading the public doesn't stifle legitimate political disagreement or debate, and that honest mistakes are taken as honest and we don't punish the wrong people. Just finally, I think I want to finish that those who emphasised law change is not enough. We need a culture change. They're absolutely right. But I worry when culture change is seen as deliverable by codes of conduct. I dread endless training sessions in candour and ethics.

I mean, HR departments will have a field day, but I don't know what it will achieve. What I remember from Hillsborough most vividly from growing up, was the officially endorsed cultural attitude was contempt for football fans talked about as scum. Sad to say, such visceral snobbery about working class people is still prevalent, and we heard it in the vile demonisation of Brexit voters. They were ignorant, deep deplorables, the name calling doled out at those worried about asylum hotels or HMOs in their areas, smeared as racist the treatment of those who for years tried to talk about rape, grooming gangs labelled Islamophobic, and the young girls who went to the police.

Child victims of gross sexual abuse went to the police and were arrested as prostitutes. Most members of the public have not been stonewalled at inquiries, but they have been gaslit by politicians who evade using candour with voters, and they have been hectored and hounded to dial down their fury for speaking inconvenient truths about state cover ups. And they, in fact, are the real whistleblowers that we should value. The public know when things are going wrong. So taking public concerns seriously is the culture change we need.

That's how we'll know when things are going wrong at the heart of the state, and we at the heart of the state should listen to them, not stonewall them, not gaslight them. And this bill is a start, but it's

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the tip of the iceberg. My Lords, I welcome this bill and congratulate all campaigners who helped to secure the duty of candour and extend human rights. However, I have several concerns. The Bill imposes a duty of candour The Bill imposes a duty of candour only after a formal inquiry, inquest or government led review has started. Such inquiries are preceded by years of toil by whistleblowers and concerned citizens, but there is no duty of candour for those stages.

There are numerous examples showing that the state officials go to enormous lengths to conceal information and prevent reviews and inquiries. The DWP fought for years to avoid publishing a damning report into how Errol Graham, who weighed just

20:36

Lord Sikka (Labour)

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four and a half stone when his body was discovered by bailiffs was discovered by bailiffs attempting to evict him in 2018. His benefits were wrongly stopped. His benefits were wrongly stopped. Subsequently, the DWP conducted a safeguarding review of vulnerable safeguarding review of vulnerable benefit claimants. The Child Poverty Action Group submitted a Poverty Action Group submitted a Freedom of Information request for a copy of the review. The DWP refused and spent £50,000 on legal fees to prevent a this release.

Three years after the original FOI request, a tribunal forced the government to release the information. So can the Minister explain why? Is there no duty of candour at all stages of. Or when officials are. Interact with the public at large? The bill invokes the concept of protected information, which for years has been used to avoid accountability. Let me just give one example. In 2006, I began a five and a half years chase to secure a document relating to the forcible closure of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in July 1991.

It was the biggest banking fraud of the 20th century. Thousands of people lost their savings. The government invoked exemptions in the FOI, including national security, to justify denial, even though most of the information they were concealing was already sitting in the US Congress library. In 2011, three judges unanimously ruled against the government. The document was not about any spy satellites or troop movements. It was about how the government was covering up the biggest banking fraud and protecting the Middle East royal families.

The government had used BCCi to fund Al-Qaeda murderers, smugglers and sundry in the war in Afghanistan. To this day, there had been. There has been no inquiry into the closure of BCCi and the Bill, and the Bill does not really explain how it will deal with the misuse of this concept of protected information. Clause four of the Bill applies the duty of candour to non-public entities, which could be private entities, though, including those that provide services to a public authority such as the NHS.

The duty will apply to private healthcare providers only if they are providing care under NHS contracts, but not otherwise. Why is that so? Minister? Why is there no duty of candour on giant corporations whose practices affect our daily lives even more than the state? The Post Office scandal is. One is one of the triggers for the bill, and I have concerns of here about the government's candour. On numerous occasions I have raised issues about the hundred or so prosecutions of postmasters by DWP on 27th February 2025, the Minister for the Department of Business and Trade and Department of Science and Technology told this House, and I quote my noble friend Lord Sikka raised a question about the DWP convictions.

I can assure him that the Minister for transformation is looking into this. A review is being established, and I hope to provide more information about that. End of quote. Nothing has been heard since. I organise an annual event on 16th December to review progress and issues relating to the scandal and ahead of last year's event are directly contacted. Number ten. It arranged a meeting with the Minister for transformation. That meeting took place on 27th January 2026, and I learnt that there has been no review.

Indeed, there is no reviewer, none has been appointed. In March 2026, DWP advertised for a part time reviewer, possibly working only for 30 days to do the reviews. In response to a Freedom of Information request on 22nd July 26th, DWP said, and I quote, the process of appointment is still under way, end of quote. It refused to reveal the exact terms of the reference for the reviewer. So 20 months after the initial statement to this House, there has been no update.

No review. There is no reviewer. None has been appointed. There are no meetings with survivors or their victims or their families. So in the spirit of candour, Minister, I invite you to investigate this disappointing chain of events and return to this chamber to explain to the House why, for 20 months, there has been no candour about what's been going on.

20:41

Baroness Kramer (Liberal Democrat)

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Excellent. >> After a day of extraordinarily brilliant speeches from people who have an understanding that goes way beyond mine, I'm going to keep my words to a fairly narrow topic, and that of whistleblowing that, my Lords, the duty of candour is intended to deter wrongful behaviour and cover ups and to expose them if they happen. But that goal requires people to be confident, to speak out. In other words, to blow the whistle and hopefully, long before we reach the crisis point of an inquiry.

Whistleblowers are also crucial voices at inquiries. But two fears hold people back from speaking out, the fear that the issue will not be investigated, and the fear that they will face detriment and retaliation for speaking out. Now, the existing whistleblowing framework that we have in place today does not eradicate those two fears. And whistleblowers are regularly ignored that silenced, and they often pay a high personal price, finding that their careers and their financial future is in ruins.

And I what, indeed? What protections do exist under Peter and under the. Employment rights only apply to a very narrow definition of workers and not to many people whose voices are absolutely critical. Now, this bill takes some steps forward in clause ten, section five, by adjusting the Code of Ethical conduct. But the steps are not sufficient, and indeed, the requirements introduced into the code would almost certainly be met by the existing whistleblowing provisions in virtually every part of the public sector, and private, the very provisions that have tragically failed to prevent or expose serious wrongs, whether it's in the NHS, the police, transport.

People have heard so many examples today and I could go on. Now the preferred Liberal Democrat solution would be an independent office of the whistleblower, functioning as a hub with spokes to the various public authorities, regulators and enforcement and enforcement agencies. The office would provide an independent, clear and simple channel for protected disclosures, ensure that, when reasonable, the appropriate authority regulator or enforcement agency investigates and prevent or counter retaliation or

21:02

Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice (Crossbench)

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detriment for speaking out. Now, I recognise this is likely to be beyond the scope of this bill. A beyond the scope of this bill. A narrower office could be set up under the Civil Service Commission and thereby come within scope. It's and thereby come within scope. It's not ideal. Some people may come to the conclusion that it would at least be something, but at the very least be something, but at the very least, this bill needs to tackle head on the most serious issues head on the most serious issues that whistleblowers face.

There is no mechanism in this bill to ensure that whistleblower information is properly triaged, and reports with merit are then investigated. Just as importantly, the bill, including the Code of Ethical Conduct, ignores the issue of detriment and retaliation, both formal and informal, and I am very sure that amendments will come forward to require public authorities to initiate investigations when in receipt of meaningful information and to counter retaliation, retaliation, and I will be hopefully supporting a number of those.

Now, the Minister, I suspect, will respond to my issues by saying that a review of the whole whistleblowing framework will begin this autumn, but we have already had such a review initiated by the Department of Business and Trade in March 2023 and published in July 2025. I mean much good that has done us. Despite some excellent work by the authors, Grant Thornton Experience warns us that reviews are long grass strategies, and I am very concerned that the practical application of the Public Office Accountability Bill, which surely we owe effective application of the Bill to all those who have campaigned so long and so hard and in such difficult circumstances.

But I can see all of that being undermined by the real life effect of ignoring whistleblowing issues. My Lords, like other speakers, I am very determined not to endanger the safe passage of this bill. It's far too important to be delayed, but I also believe that we should seize the opportunity to strengthen whistleblowing protections for public officials, but also for the many others, such as contractors, clients, suppliers whom this bill needs to speak out. The duty of candour will always be far more effective if those who speak out have confidence that wrongful behaviour is investigated, and that they will not become the victims of retaliation and detriment for the

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act of speaking out. Yes. My Lords, it's a pleasure to

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My Lords, it's a pleasure to follow the noble Lady Baroness Kramer, and I think she raises some really valid concerns about whistleblowing. And I know it's late, but I'm just going to take a moment to echo other noble Lords who have welcomed Lord Lemos to his who have welcomed Lord Lemos to his place. And I, too, would like to thank the noble Lady Baroness Levitt for the care that she took Levitt for the care that she took on this bill previously, and I would like to welcome this bill.

It's the result of many years campaigning from the Hillsborough families, but like Lord Bichard and Lord Carlile of Berriew, I can't help feeling slightly conflicted. When I told my husband what this bill was about, making sure that when a public authority has failed, all those with any knowledge or responsibility will be completely truthful and transparent about what went wrong. He was incredulous. Doesn't that happen already? He asked. Do you really need a law for that? But no, as we know, it doesn't happen.

And as you well know, if you have had the terrible misfortune to be part of any of the scandals over the last 30 years and more, that, my Lords, is the reality. And whatever we feel about it, on the face of it, that means that this is a very good bill. It's about taking responsibility and holding public bodies to account, which is something that we all support across this House. But however good its intentions, this bill isn't a panacea. And I do think it's really important that we're honest about that.

Let's not over promise, because if you're involved in an inquiry or an inquest where this duty applies, then you've already been let down on a scale that is life altering. So I do think it's important to take a moment, as Lord Bellamy did earlier, just to mention the NHS duty, which didn't quite work out as intended. Despite having been in existence for nearly 12 years. And so I had a look at the government's 2024 review of that duty. And it's pretty clear that it didn't lead to the desired culture change.

94% 94% of patients said that providers had failed to engage meaningfully and compassionately following a safety incident, and nor did it always increase transparency. There were some healthcare professionals admitting that they are, or were reluctant to complete a duty of candour for fear of blame or declaring their own guilt. And that last finding tallies with the Ockenden review, which did highlight the notable reduction of reported moderate harm incidents following the duty's introduction. Now, I'm sure the Minister will tell me, and of course he's right that this duty is different.

It's it's more far reaching. It is, we hope, more straightforward. And of course, it has the new criminal enforcement mechanisms. And I really hope that it does lead to the necessary change in behaviour. So I'd also be interested, as others have mentioned, to know what thinking has gone in to ensuring better compliance and also that the sanctions will deter rather than embed defensiveness, as has happened in healthcare. Now, in the other place, the hon. Member for Godalming and Ash, Sir Jeremy Hunt, who introduced the duty, identified a different problem with regard to lawyers who advise trusts not to say anything when there is a risk of legal action.

It's something we may wish to look at here, along with another of his amendments, which would require information to be provided to a person or family who has or may have been harmed, not just to those conducting investigations or reviews. Now, I appreciate that this would expand the scope of the bill somewhat, but I do think it's interesting, firstly, because it potentially brings forward the time frame in which families get the answers they're seeking. And secondly, because it gives victims and families the agency that Lord Sewell Lord Wills spoke about so eloquently.

And and that does bring me on. I'm sure the Minister will not be surprised to hear that. It brings me on to the independent public advocate. When the role was established under the Victims and Prisoners Act, it was acknowledged that while it would not have statutory powers to hold public bodies to account, the IPA should become a figure of recognised integrity and authority, someone that institutions cannot brush off or ignore. And in Cindy Butts the first IPA, we are incredibly fortunate because we've got just such a person.

But she can only establish the role with the proper support and the right structural frameworks. So I was surprised and perhaps disappointed not to see mention of the IPA in this bill. And to that end, I will join with others in looking at amendments which will incorporate the role of the IPA, given its specific purpose, which is to support victims, survivors and bereaved families. And as my noble friend Baroness May of Maidenhead said so powerfully, the only person within the system whose sole purpose it is to support them and who could do it to a far greater degree than we currently allow for.

The new bill has provisions in terms of legal aid, parity, equality of arms, as we've heard. But this is about more than legal representation. As Lord Bichard said, it's about the relationship between the public and the state. And I think we all agree that fundamentally, this bill is about rebuilding trust when trust in the system has been smashed to pieces and for many, many, the IPA will be the first crucial step in that process. And I hope the Minister has heard the strength of feeling and support for the IPA across the House.

Just finally, there is a third element which has been highlighted already by Lord Beamish Lord Bellamy and Lord Bird Carter of Hazlemere, and that is the need for some form of oversight in terms of inquiry recommendations and coroner's prevention of future death reports. However, I accept that that is not for the face of this bill, and I appreciate that work is going on in tandem, which is really, really good news because with that work and this bill and an IPA that is supported to become truly effective and not merely a signposting position, then I think we do end up with something that can deliver the justice and accountability that we all seek and the public deserves.

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To follow. I know on a number of issues which we agree on, and I won't repeat those again this evening. I would like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Lemos on his work he's doing on this bill, and look forward to working with him on some of the issues that I've been working on earlier, and also for the work that my noble friend and very good friend, Baroness Levitt, has done friend, Baroness Levitt, has done on the bill and the time that she's given to so many people on this bill over and above.

Thank you so much. Also, I'd like to thank the families from Hillsborough Law and from the other awful incidents that have happened, where people have not been able to find the truth, who have had the pleasure to work with and to see, and also to thank the organisations who arranged all the meetings that we were able to have here, and 1 to 1 meetings on Zoom and so on with families is so important, and they all welcome this bill very much.

I welcome the bill. I welcome the Second Reading and the Hillsborough Law bill today. I want to start by paying my respects to the victims of the 1989 disaster and the bereaved families who have campaigned, campaigned tirelessly for nearly four decades to receive their most basic need, the truth, and about what happened to their loved ones. My Lords, I welcome the Bill and believe that it is significantly strengthens our judicial system and the process that affects survivors and families and victims.

The bill embodies the bodies the duty of candour. It is the supplement and strengthening the data and and disclosure. Firstly, my Lords, I would like to take a moment to discuss the role of the survivor and bereaved family, who quite often are ignored and pushed aside within the new process due to be established. My Lords, firstly devastated by the loss of their loved ones, the Hillsborough family spent decades in pursuit of information on what happened that tragic day. Without help from others, they would have not got there.

I'd like to thank all of those who helped them to continue with their fight, to give them the strength, and all the while, state institutions actively acted in what was a cover up. My Lords, this compounded the tragedy of their loss, their journey for the truth, taking decades of pain and anger of the system that should have protected them. What those families experienced reflected a wider culture where candour has become a rare exception, my Lords, and therefore welcome the duty of candour and assistance that forms the heart of the Bill.

During the process of designing ethical codes of practice and conduct, I hope that the government takes heed of the advice of families who have witnessed the system, who at first hand, have been pushed, and the works, in close consultation with those who have lived through the process, my Lords, so that the changes reflect the needs of those affected most deeply. In practice, a survivor centred approach is to make this work is crucial to those families, and to future families, and future individuals who have may have to go through these situations.

As we've seen in in the health service recently and in other incidents that have been mentioned tonight, so that the delivery of both appropriate and sensitivity to their needs and care not be pushed aside. Secondly, I want to turn to the bill's provisions for legal aid and the parity of representation extending to Non-means tested legal aid to bereaved families who to bereaved families. Inquests where a public authority is so interested, so an interested person is significant and welcome step and connects the imbalance that has long left grieving families representing themselves with help, some quite often without legal help but doing it themselves with a friend against a well resourced state body.

My Lords, we know from in in the organisation called inquest how they have had to work with families to try to get the truth. It is absolutely important that the legal aid budget should be increased. It's not about moving one piece of money from another, it should be long last. The legal aid budget has to be increased to take care of these issues, not not moving it about. I think that we have to look at. We've had too many cuts in legal aid over the last ten years, and it's absolutely important that this is this has taken into account, and we've got support from the Law Society, from the Bar Council, from other legal entities.

This is key to make this bill work. During the process of advice, families have witnessed the system at first hand and it works. Close consultation for those who have lived through the process. A survivor centred approach to this work is crucial, and so that the delivery of both appropriate and sensitive to their needs. My Lords, I want, secondly, to turn to the bill's. I've dealt with that. Oh yes. Just to say that the number of cases that they think that there is going to be even more.

So I think that there is that figure I know people are quite worried about. I think that that figure is right. I've asked various people about that, and I think that the figure, it could go up to 11,000 shows how great the need has been. And also, we really have to ensure that families are not having to go to other people to raise money for them to, to, to do this. It should be a natural way of life that it should be available. They should be able to be representative, properly represented properly to know what happened at that time, the legal position to ensure the providers capacity and the funding to keep pace with the welcomed expansion.

The Bill gives the bereaved families and survivors, many of whom are women, who have carried the campaign for years and a firmer foundation to which they can seek truth. Whilst the bill cannot change the culture overnight, it marks significant progress to our protection for those who have been harmed by the state's institutions and will dissuade future cover ups, including. We don't know what's happened in these recent railway, in incidents in these accidents are the ones that have happened just recently. So it is important that this bill is passed and we get the information passed into into make it work.

It's how it's going to work is what matters. After we've had the bill through, we all have to then work on the next stage of

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how it's implemented. The points I was going to make

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The points I was going to make have been made by others, far more powerful than I can say. I will try and be as brief as possible, given and be as brief as possible, given that we are coming to the late stage of the evening. There are many of us here who know what it's many of us here who know what it's like to come up against an opaque, prevaricating evasive state. I've had the honour of working with many had the honour of working with many whistleblowers over many years as a journalist and on the board of the Care Quality Commission, which in itself, of course, you know, missed mid staffs, for example.

So let's remember that when we expect public servants to delegate their consciences to regulators, the regulators are also very often flawed. And one of the things I've observed over many years. And by the way, not every whistleblower is genuine. There are many people with personal vendettas. There are many people who've become actually so emotionally harmed by their involvement in situations that they're not always coherent. So again, you know, when you're triaging these systems, it's actually something that's very, very difficult to do.

Not every case is simple. Not every case is black and white at all. And that is one of the reasons why there's so it's so important that we understand the nuance of this debate. One of the things I've observed is that the more agencies you have involved, and the bigger the state becomes, the easier it is for people to cover up and pass the buck. That's actually one of the things we saw in the horizon scandal. It's true of almost every single scandal that we have in our public life.

And I would simply warn every single member in this chamber who has, at some point in this debate, proposed yet another agency, yet another ombudsman, yet another committee. That is not, in my view, going to solve anything. It is so much easier to get to the truth when systems are simpler and very often with the best will in the world, we make them more and more complicated. So we must get this bill right. We all agree on the objectives. Absolutely. And it is shocking, as many have said, that it has taken 37 years to get to this point or that we even need to get to this point.

But changing culture isn't just a question of issuing codes of conduct. Others have made that point, and Baroness Sanderson eloquently described how the duty of candour, which has existed in the NHS since 2012. I was involved in that. It has not worked, so I would be very interested if the Minister could clarify what the government's assessment is of that and how it thinks this duty of candour will be different, because I can tell you that it hasn't worked, and one of the reasons it hasn't worked is that the bill for clinical negligence is going up and up in the NHS, and it is not in anyone's interest to raise that bill.

One of the many issues that was discussed at the time when that original duty was introduced in the NHS was what we'd learned from the airline industry, which significantly reduced crashes after 1970s by completely reforming the way that people in that industry communicated with each other. What they did was they introduced a no blame culture that's very unfashionable. It was unfashionable when Jeremy Hunt raised it many years ago. But I do think that in this gap that we're identifying in this debate, the gap between the need to get to the truth quickly and the eventual public inquiry, if there has been a cover up, I would urge some consideration as to maybe how we get to the truth early and rapidly through a no blame culture, rather than appearing as this bill appears to do, to load more blame.

Because, as James Arbuthnot so eloquently described, people are human and they want to believe what they want to believe. And people don't always know what the truth is or that they're covering it up. A number of short questions, if I may. I really do think, as others have said, that the IPA should be referenced in this bill and have proper support. I'm not. I would like to understand why it hasn't been. Another question is. Lord Lemos earlier said that the bill creates a deliberately high threshold.

That's something we all agree with, but I'm not quite clear how it's going to do that, given the expansive terms and definitions that are used in the bill. So, you know, when you use terms like reckless and misleading, I mean, there are many lawyers in this House who might suggest that those are quite broad definitions. And I'd like to understand how the government intends to restrict this, the criminalisation and the prosecutions to a relatively small number of extreme examples and tragedies.

I'd also like to ask how, what level of increased caseload for the police and the criminal justice system the government has assessed? Are you going to resource the police and the criminal justice system properly to record the incidents and investigate them? And that's separate from prosecuting, because we are going to have to we're going to have to deal with an awful lot of allegations, proven and unproven, in order to get to get to the truth. And lastly, can we do more, as others have mentioned, to reward and help whistleblowers? Clause ten does give greater protection to whistleblowers.

There's much to welcome in this bill, but can we do more to actually elevate whistle the whistleblowers who help us get to the truth? I imagine that Alan Bates in the Post Office has done more for actually, public officials who want to do their job properly in this country than anything else we've done, because people know that it's the right thing to do to stand up to power. But one of the things we did on this CQC board after Mid Staffs was most of the board left and one of the only people who remained as a non-executive director was Kay Sheldon, who was the one of the whistleblowers who was brave enough from the CQC end to stand up and give evidence to the public inquiry.

She was accused of having mental health problems. She was dragged through the mud. It was utterly disgraceful. But the board acted by keeping her on for a second term and that was a very important signal, I think, of our desire to actually promote a genuine culture of openness within the organisation. We can all think of a number of people Fergal Sharkey of the water companies, a number of people, campaigners who ought to be on the boards of some of these public agencies because they embody precisely the values we're talking about.

That's something, perhaps to think about. But just to close, we need cultures in which staff are empowered or feel empowered to act, to prevent harm in everyday events. A lot of these things start with everyday events, and they need to feel they can do that without fear of recrimination or blame. And that means actually changing leadership and changing culture. And it does. It means getting at what I'm afraid, my own profession, the media does frequently, which is the let's make heads roll culture.

It means getting underneath at those junior levels of staff to give them more confidence. And it means not, I think, immediately criminalising all of these activities. And for that reason, I would strongly endorse Lord Bellamy suggestion that we should form a committee to look at this again in 2 or 3 years time. We do not know if this is going to work. We don't know whether it will work or how well it will work. I desperately hope it will work, but I also feel that we're going to need to actually monitor quite closely the situation to see whether this can do something different to the duties

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of candidate we already have in our public life. Lord Doyle as the final backbench speaker, I suppose a lot has been said, but I would like to give a perspective from Northern give a perspective from Northern Ireland. I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate. I welcome the Minister on the front welcome the Minister on the front bench, Lord Lemos, and I also welcome the participation of my welcome the participation of my noble friend Baroness Levitt. I would also like to congratulate the tenacious campaigning of all of

21:07

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour)

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those people in Hillsborough who suffered immeasurable grief on that suffered immeasurable grief on that day. On the 15th of April, 1989. And it was through their campaigning and that of many public representatives in Liverpool and beyond, including the current Prime beyond, including the current Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, that succeeded in achieving this succeeded in achieving this legislation. So it is landmark legislation. But tonight we must not forget the victims of Grenfell, the Post Office scandal, the infected blood issue, sodium valproate and mesh.

All of these issues. People were confronted with lack of closure, lack of information and lack of transparency. And they deserve that. And I hope that this legislation will be the vehicle that will provide them with that necessary disclosure, accountability and truth, and above all, justice. But from a Northern Ireland perspective, I would like to ask the Minister a couple of questions. My noble friend, could he confirm when the legislative consent motion will be approved by the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly in respect of this legislation, and if he has had any discussions with the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly regarding the passage of the legislative consent motion.

And secondly, it is the issue that I have been contacted about by the Victims and Survivors Commission in Northern Ireland and also Amnesty International in Northern Ireland. They want to ensure that this bill, which they support, introduces the code or the duty of candour and applies to all to ensure that necessary accountability and transparency. They. Those bodies representing victims in Northern Ireland want the duty of candour. Legislation to apply to all, including the security services, who for too long have been cloaked in secrecy and shielded people in some instances from the truth.

So the questions there is it is not clear to us, and we will seek clarification, that the draft legislation, as it stands, will apply the duty of candour to ECHR. EFRA, which is the succeeding body, will be the Legacy Commission. And on this point, the definition of inquiry and investigations in the Public Accountability Bill. Schedule one para eight only applies to other investigations, but the definition of an investigation is broad. So if there could be clarification on that, if the duty of candour does not apply to any successor bodies, then there will be a series and deeply concerning inequity between reinstated inquests and the Legacy Commission investigations, including inquisitorial proceedings.

And this is especially a concern given the intent to funnel investigations concerning sensitive information to a new Legacy Commission. I have already given my noble friend the Minister, sight of my question in relation to this issue, and it is that the duty of candour must apply to all troubles investigations. So therefore, my noble friend the Minister offered the assurance today that it will. And finally, credit for this legislation must go to the Hillsborough campaigners, their families, their public representatives, the Prime Minister and the government for their persistence in seeking truth and accountability for those who have been wronged in 1989.

And since that, and even before that, that is what we are looking to see. And I see this legislation as the vehicle

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and the pathway to do just that. My Lords, it's. A pleasure to follow Lady Richie and also to welcome Lord Lemos to and also to welcome Lord Lemos to his new role and thank him for meeting with us last week. And I also want to thank Lady Levitt for also want to thank Lady Levitt for all the work that she did on the bill earlier in the summer. I want to declare an interest as a to declare an interest as a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, because earlier in Reform Trust, because earlier in tonight's debate, police spies out of lives.

Who are the victims in the spy cops case came to the trust and asked us some years ago if we would help them find some support for the beginning of the inquest. Yes, we said two years. We're still funding them 11 years on and that's an absolute scandal. So I want to start with a tribute from these benches to all the victims and families in the Hillsborough tragedy, but also the many, many others who noble Lords have referred to during this debate today.

I am also grateful for the many organisations who've engaged with us and sent us briefings, regardless of whether briefings have come from whether charities working with victims of appalling injustice at the hands of the state, or legal and health bodies for formal roles in delivering transparent and accountable services. There is one clear message for this government, which I think they should be encouraged by. We need this bill, but it does need strengthening, and I think we've heard that from most sides in the House today.

Or perhaps it will not work quite as Ministers want. Lord Faulkner said that we need a duty of candour because the Hillsborough police admitted that they lied. But I was very taken with Lord Burchard, who spoke about how trust had been lost as a result of the many shocking cases. So we have to make this bill work. But how important it is that officials, police in the case that Lord Faulkner mentioned in Hillsborough

21:14

Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat)

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should mean not lying in the first place, is the fundamental starting point. As we've heard, the origins of this bill, often called the Hillsborough law, came from the disaster in 1998 and 89 and the decades long campaign by the decades long campaign by the families and survivors, including the work of our new Prime Minister. And Lord Blunkett, spoke on the And Lord Blunkett, spoke on the impressive but tragic effectiveness of families and survivors. And one of the things that impressed me most with my portfolio covering most of the the inquiries and compensation schemes, is how the survivors of one particular issue get in touch and work with their colleagues in others.

And that has been one of the few really positive things that I've seen over the last few years. And Lord Blunkett was also right that lies told that day are an absolute stain on the police. But also, as we now know in other tragedies as well, from these benches, we have consistently supported the principle of a duty of candour. We will scrutinise this Bill to ensure that the Bill delivers genuine accountability, that it works in practice. Our specific concerns remain on implementation, legal aid, whistleblowing enforcement and senior responsibility.

That sounds like an awful lot of things, but they are all woven into each other. Many of our concerns are based on experience. We've heard from those who've been victims. I've worked closely in the last few years with the infected blood survivors and victims. There's still a very unsatisfactory response. After 50 years. I met some of the students at Lord Mair Law School 51 years ago. The boys who had haemophilia, who I did a theatre workshop with, and they helped me with cooking for my theatre group.

They're dead. All of them. They were infected by a doctor who did not tell either them or their parents that they were guinea pigs for new type of blood that had come from America. And the same was true for those. Sorry. Lady May said that the Hillsborough lie started on that day, but the same was not true for. For these children there was no. There was a lie of omission. Those children were absolutely deserted, and there has been.

Nobody held to account for that. And it looks as though. Although there are some people being cases being looked at by the police, that many of the doctors who did this are now dead, and officials. And there is no paperwork whatsoever from that long ago. But it's not just about the past because for the infected blood community, even last month, one of the previous excuse me, compensation schemes, the English Blood Compensation Scheme, wrote to a number of the widows in the scheme, saying they had erroneously been given money and it must be repaid immediately.

It would they would be allowed a year, but in some cases that's up to a thousand a month. And they are widows on pensions. And this group of victims have not even been able to start to apply for what they are entitled to under the new scheme that was set up two years ago, because they are affected, not infected victims. Now, very helpfully, both Ibca and the government have stopped it. We don't know how many are affected, but it's not.

In the past. This was just a couple of months ago. Why did a scheme think it was appropriate to do that? The Post Office Horizon scandal, which has been championed by Lord Arbuthnot and Lord Beamish and others, also still hasn't resolved matters. So postmasters not only don't have just settlements, but many are still waiting for justice for their criminal wrong criminal convictions to be overturned. And also it's about the new scheme for capture, which a number of us asked questions about two years ago.

And Ministers said at the despatch box, I believe that they believed what they had been told, that there was no risk from capture at all because it was completely different. Two years on, we are now discovering that is not the case. It's the Grenfell disaster where, ten years on, justice has still not been delivered to the families of those who died and to those who were injured. The Windrush scandal outlined by Lady Benjamin, where people were actually threatened with deportation because papers had been lost.

These people were the ones who came, were invited to come to the UK to help us develop our life after the Second World War and the atomic war bombed veterans from 60 years ago who are still waiting to get on to the first steps. The victims of childhood sexual abuse, both historic and more recent, the Icsr inquiry report and recent court cases have demonstrated our children are still not safe without proper mandatory reporting and duty of candour and the continuing scandal of this disabling use of vaginal mesh, as well as sodium valproate being given to young women with epilepsy who became pregnant.

2000 of their children have developmental and other physical disabilities. Some of that is still happening. My Lords. This is a real scandal. At committee and Report stage. We will be testing the efficacy of the details of this bill about whether those scandals and tragedies will be prevented and managed in the future. And my noble friend Lady Ludford, set out the importance of the ECHI in underpinning the moral framework that real truth is spoken to power, and that justice is not denied by the state.

Lord Howard explained how public officials and Ministers can unwittingly not tell the truth, for it has been hidden from them, and that we have seen, I think, actually for Ministers in 2 or 3 of these particular scandals from every single party. The postmasters in the horizon scheme saw it, as well as infected blood, we note, and are particularly interested in the long title to the Bill, which is applicable to the conduct of public authorities and public officials at all times and is not confined to Post-failure consideration and investigation.

And we also note the purpose of the act is defined in clause one in clause one to be imposes a requirement on public authorities to act at all times to maintain ethical conduct, candour, transparency and frankness, and is similarly unconfined. And as others have said, we are particularly concerned about that golden thread in this day and age where public services may commission things but not actually deliver them. And we're interested in the relationship of some of the subcontractors and whether they will be caught by this.

I know that some people think they will all be. I'm not convinced that they are. As Lady Benjamin said, we'd like to see the enforcement mechanisms in respect of part two, chapter two strengthened on the level applicable by part one to inquiries and investigations. Very clear duty breach of which gives rise to criminal sanction in the terms of clause five, or at least of a comparable level. Lord Anderson of Ipswich examined the principles of misconduct in public office and how far it will extend beyond the most senior people or to subcontractors.

And as I've just said, that is an area that we want to look at. Lady Cramer, Lady Hamwee and Lord Rennard from our benches have raised the vital issue of protection of those trying to whistle blow. We don't believe that the Employment Rights Act 1966 and the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, which amends the previous bill, both of which set out how whistleblowing is protected work in practice because the legislation has patently failed. This bill will also fail if whistleblowing isn't strengthened too.

So, as Lady Cramer said, we will bring forward some amendments as far as we can within scope to make sure that whistleblowing can start to work, and not just for employees to. For others, a Committee stage will also seek clarification on a number of issues around the applicability of the bill for subcontractors and their suppliers to the supply chain. In the Grenfell Tower, tragedy was a particular problem, with some noble Lords have outlined. My noble friend Lady Hamwee rightly asked for clarity on the role and resources of the independent Public Advocate, supported by lady May and others.

We must not create an important body to set it up to fail. This bill will not work without legal aid provision, and I will not repeat what many of the people who spoke about it said, except to say that the briefing from the Bar Council and the briefing from inquest absolutely said the same thing. There has to be a level playing field for families, survivors. Please let that happen. The NHS duty of candour is not working. Others have already outlined that.

But I remember in 2013 the Francis report set out the failings in the Mid Staffs Hospital Trust, and I'm going to quote just a half of paragraph. It said this was primarily caused by CCA serious failure on the part of a provider trust board. It didn't listen to its patients and staff or ensure the correction of deficiencies brought to the trust's attention. Above all, it failed to tackle an insidious negative culture involving a tolerance of poor standards and a disengagement from managerial and leadership responsibilities.

That sounds very familiar, because it's almost what Lady Donna Ockenden said in her report, published earlier this year about the many, many maternity scandals. My Lords, we have the evidence that the system we have in the NHS is not working. But I want to move, as I close to two things that I think we can hope for in the future. Many Lords will know that I am passionate about a mandatory reporting for child sex abuse, as was outlined in the Independent Inquiry in Child Abuse, and we've had a case this last week, and I just want to ask the Minister a question.

This is the Sally Ann Berwin case. She was convicted a couple of days ago from what's been reported during the trial. We have concerns that the law would not have required the concerns or allegations brought to the attention of the statutory authorities at the time. That's why prescribed mandatory reporting is so important. I wonder if the Minister could write to me to let me know whether that would be the case. But in summation, we really need to prevention of excuse me, a lot of people got costs today prevention of need for compensation, a work.

What's a working system? So my positive notes are to France during the early years of the infected blood scandal was very different to the UK and to Canada. In the late 80s, the judiciary became really concerned. They have a different judicial system to us, and they started to investigate and they brought two cases. One started in 88 and finished in 1990 and another one later in the 90s. The result of that was that about six people were brought to trial. One senior health official was found guilty and sent to prison.

One very senior Minister was found guilty and not sent to prison. But I don't quite know what else happened. But the others were not found guilty because they were not part of that golden thread of knowledge. And the duty of candour, therefore could not have applied to them. So for the many people who have been concerned, the French have learnt how to do this right. The loss of trust in the public as these cases came to light was changed radically by those court cases.

And my final very brief example is from Australia, which has introduced mandatory reporting and child sex abuse has a full duty of candour. But it isn't just about the law. There is a no blame culture throughout the system, whether it's schools, whether it's hospitals, whether it's children's social care that's taken some time to get right. But as a result, there are now more possible cases being reported, which is actually what we want to see and hear. And staff are not scared that they will lose their job because they won't.

I hope, my Lords, that this is what we will get to with the end of this Bill. We may need to review it after it comes into force, but let's get on with it.

21:27

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative)

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21:45

Lord Lemos, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Labour)

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a humbling privilege for me to be responsible for progressing this responsible for progressing this bill through your Lordships House, and I'm very proud to be doing that, and I'm very proud to be following and I'm very proud to be following my noble friend, Lady Levitt, who has done such a distinguished job has done such a distinguished job to get us where we are today. I, my to get us where we are today. I, my Lords, I will seek to address as many of the issues as I can, but I know I will fail.

I have not a hope in hell in addressing all the issues that were raised in 45 speeches, but but I. I will try my best. I'm not terribly good at name checking everyone that spoke, but as I say, I'll try my best. The. The comments that the Noble and learned, Lord Keen of Elie and Lord Wolfson have just made about scopes those detailed comments. I thank the noble Lord Wolfson for letting me off the hook of having to reply to them all this evening, but.

But I will respond to them in detail, both in writing and in in. At the Committee stage. I've already written to the noble and learned Lord, Lord keen on some of some of these matters, and we will continue to to engage in that way. I promised to write in detail to all Lords because I know, as I say, I'll get as far as I can, but. But I won't be able to deal with everything that. All the noble authors have participated in this debate.

I look forward to continuing to meet with the noble, all noble Lords who are interested. Some noble Lords have specifically mentioned they'd like to be like to meet me. I'd be delighted to do that, but I'll meet with others too. I will also meet with campaigners. I meet with family members including Lord Alton, the Divine Family. I'd be. I'd be delighted to do that. Between now and the debates in Committee, and we shall continue these discussions at Committee stage.

But can I turn to some specific items that have been raised? My sort of rough rule of thumb is to try and deal with the issues that have been raised by the largest number of peers, if I can, but, but I'll see how I do. I think every, every every one of your Lordships that has spoken in this debate has made the point that this is about culture change. And if we don't achieve that, we we have seriously failed in our duty.

What. And I'm not, I can't, I can't, I don't have time to name check you all. I would just mention the noble Lord Lord Wills, whom I've had the pleasure of speaking to several times, and the work he's done over a long time on all this, and the work that Lord Alton has done through the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I was very struck by the comments of Lord Bichard. I'll return to those in a moment, but I want to set out, first of all, what the government's position is on the ways in which we can ensure that this.

This is effective at the cultural level as a prevention mechanism, and I very much agree with the comments made by Lady Sanderson that there are strong interdependency and indeed, Lady Cavendish, that there are strong interdependencies here. And this bill comes as a package rather than as a series. So the government will publish statutory guidance to support public authorities, to establish the codes that the Bill requires to ensure they meet the requirements of the bill. And we have had a number of important and interesting observations about how we can do that effectively, and I'm very happy to continue that in those discussions, and I am very interested to continue to discuss how we can, through this bill, begin to drive ethical behaviour throughout the organisation.

A number of noble Lords have made the point about the junior ranks, and I. I take that very seriously. I was very struck by Lord Bichard comments on on leadership. Lord Barber made the same point and we I. We all know that that is the centre of what we are discussing here. The government, under the former Prime Minister, commissioned the new Ethics and Integrity Commission to work towards becoming a centre for excellence, for codes of conduct and that is an independent body and the Cabinet Office duty of candour team are working closely with the officials of the Ethics and Integrity Commission on how we take this forward, and as part of that, Ethics and Integrity Commission will research and develop guidance on codes of ethics that will be published on their website.

So all public authorities will have access. But my Lords, I'm not seeking to argue that that that through the through those traditional means, we can bring about the culture change that we seek. Lord Bellamy's observations about the social and psychological aspects of the changes we're seeking, which seem to me very pertinent. This is not just a legal exercise, and I was very struck by Lady Cavendish's phrase we cannot delegate our conscience to regulators. I know that to be true.

Having worked in private sector and public sector regulation myself, including in the financial services, regulators can help. But it is our job as legislators and as the government to set the tone. And I always welcome a cricketing metaphor, Lord Mawson, to follow through on that. I know that's the way to the boundary, and a number of noble Lords have have made the point about resources and the displacement effect of resources. And I do want to come back to to that at Committee stage.

But my main point, your Lordships is to is to is to say that the government takes very seriously. We do not we have no investment in these codes of ethical guidance, being ineffectual or failing or undermining the whole purpose of this bill. And so we do want to get this right, and we will work closely with your Lordships to to do so. We we are all on the same side. And I was going to say we all share the same scepticism.

Scepticism is the wrong word, but we share many of the same concerns that this may not achieve either what we want or as much as we want. So we'll certainly come back to that. Can I turn now to the National Security Services? I thank Lady Manningham-Buller for for her observations, and I want to reassure her. And and the security services generally that the government does take very seriously the points that she raises about the sensitivity of this and the vulnerability of all this, and how significant it is for national security.

But I am pleased that she did say that. She thought that the arrangements we've set out are adequate. I also want to thank my noble friend, Lord Beamish, who I know has done a lot of work on this, and the Intelligence and Security Committee to get us to to where we are, to which the government believes is a stable place to go forward in a way that both protects national security, protected information about national security, and ensures that the security and other services are within the scope of the bill.

I thank also the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, for his comments and drawing on his enormous experience there, and also my noble friend Baroness Chakrabarti, who who has played an important role and spoke with great force about the need to protect national security. I note the observations about from Baroness May about the possibility that these arrangements may be cumbersome. I take that very seriously, particularly coming from, if I may say so, someone with her experience and distinction. But we do.

The government does think, as far as the National security services are concerned, we have reached a stable and balanced place. Can I say a word or two about the NHS and the duty of candour there, because that's been referred to by a number of people, the intention of the NHS duty of candour is to ensure providers are open and transparent with people who use their services. This duty of candour is different, as noble Lords know, so we hope it will work a different in a different way.

I want to reassure my noble friend Lord Blunkett that the duty of candour will apply to all officials, former and current, even if they've got new jobs and I was very interested in the comments made by a number of noble Lords about the no blame culture, which I think does raise some, if I can say so, philosophical questions about our whole approach to this and the efforts of Jeremy Hunt in the NHS. Lord Arbuthnot on the on the question of the Post Office, I can absolutely assure the noble Lord that the bill does cover the Post Office, and a number of noble Lords have written, have spoken about aspects of the horizon scandal, and I'll certainly.

Right to. Specifically about all the questions that surround horizon, can I turn now to the Independent Public Advocate, which again was raised by a number of Lords? I want to be very clear that the government supports. And I think Baroness Hamwee was very politely questioning that we really do support and welcome the role of the IPA as an extremely important early intervention for victim support. I discussed it with my Commons colleague, Minister Davies-jones, this morning. I'm meeting Cindy Butts tomorrow.

We are very committed to this and we do absolutely recognise the benefits. As I think I said to Baroness Mone Baroness Amos Baroness Sanderson that a role for the IPA in these in these situations will be enormously helpful in achieving what I regard as one of the most, most important goals, which is to get help for families to get to the truth quickly. So we are not resistant to all that. How that will work in practice. I shall look forward to discussing with with many noble Lords.

On the question of legal aid. Look, a number of issues were raised about legal aid and I haven't got the time to go through them all, but I would just say the principle we're working with is to try and correct the asymmetry that exists between public bodies at inquests and families and survivors, and that that is what we will seek to achieve, not just by the, the, the, the provisions for legal aid, which I'm happy to discuss in more detail and very happily meet Lord Bach to talk about that further, but also the constraints on public bodies, to use legal representation in a way that is proportionate and responsible and does not place onerous duties on families and the bereaved and survivors.

Can I turn quickly in in the 2 or 3 minutes left to me, to 2 or 3 more important issues on whistleblowing? The the, the, the prediction that Baroness Kramer made of how I would respond was correct. We are we we are about to launch launch a consultation very soon. Not in due course, but very soon. I do want to defend where we stand on this, which is that we are here talking about whistleblowing in the public sector.

But all noble Lords know there are many concerns about whistleblowing in the private sector. Then it may not be quite the same, but we do want the government is concerned about protecting whistleblowers across the board, and that is what we hope to achieve through this, through through the work of my of my colleagues in the Department for business and a number of other things. But but I'm afraid we will want to wait for that. But I'm very happy to continue to discuss that.

And on the issue of principle of the role of whistleblowers, that is already mentioned in the way the bill is crafted and the way that the code of ethics is set out. I won't set it out now in the interest of time. So we do think we have addressed the question, whistleblowing in the way we've drafted this bill, but we will take it forward for both the public and the private sector. That is our intention and that is what I hope we will do.

On the Hicks campaign. Lord Alton. I am Baroness Levitt met with Baroness Kennedy. I shall be delighted also to meet with Baroness Kennedy. The Hicks campaign goes to what I think is one of the heart of the matter. If people can't get to the truth, if families can't get to the truth quickly, then accountability and consequences will not follow. The truth is the building block on which the foundation stone on which accountability and consequences follow.

I've run out of time. I'm just going to say 1 or 2 other things in relation to Northern Ireland. I want to reassure my noble friend Baroness Ritchie. The duty will automatically apply in the limited number of inquests that will resume as a result of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, and we are working closely. I can reassure her. We're working closely in discussion on how these how this duty of candour work will be taken up through the Legacy Commission. My Lords, I really am out of time now, but I promise to write on a number of other issues, including misleading Ministers, including the destruction of documents, including police records, extending extending this duty to subcontractors.

The government is very open to thinking about that. Further. We will talk about self-incrimination and the interaction with FOI, which we feel we're in a good place on, but very happy to discuss and some of the issues that my noble friend Lord Faulkner raised around the harm threshold will come back to. We. I'll also write about historic injustices, about command responsibilities, about the obligations on parliamentarians, Baroness Manzoor in an unusual place, but I looked up and saw your seat empty and I will write about how we arrive at our views on public bodies in scope, including universities and financial services.

I'm sorry that's been a bit rushed, my Lords, but I hope I've dealt with some of the issues and I promise to deal with the others in writing, and I look forward to engaging with all noble Lords at

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Committee stage. I beg to move. The question is that this bill be now read a second time, as many be now read a second time, as many of that opinion will say content. Content not content. The contents have it. have it.

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My sorry. Hang on, I've lost my. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I move to beg the commitment motion. Standing in my name on the Order Paper.

22:02

Lord Rooker (Labour)

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Sit down, sit down, sit down. be agreed to. Amendment Lord Rooker. >> The Lords. >> I don't want to put myself in the doghouse. And I'll only be a the doghouse. And I'll only be a few minutes. But this form of the amendment was the only time and the only place in the bill I could raise the issue I want to raise, which is, of course, calling on the government to give us a list of the issues the Commons didn't have time to consider, but I really want to talk about why they didn't have time to consider.

I've listened to every speech today, and it's absolutely clear to me there's going to be lots of amendments from this House. Going back to the Commons, and my purpose in raising the issue this way is to strengthen the role of the elected members of the Commons at the expense of the government. If I could make 2 or 3 general points, and then I'll relate these points to this Bill in the Commons on Second Reading, on every bill it's guillotined.

They call it a programme motion. It covers up. But all the bills are done that way. And we started in 97. I freely admit, on reflection, it's one of the mistakes we made. And the reason is the effect is the governments always want to boast about the numbers of bills, which is done at the expense of the scrutiny of bills, because they make the programme motion so tight, it's so tight that there are areas of the bill left Unscrutinised. So the bills arrive here in our house as a result of inadequate scrutiny.

We end up sending more amendments back to the Commons than would otherwise be the case. And then when they get into the Commons and I pick this up, the government down in the Commons, not here, of course, blames the Lords for MPs having to do more work on what we've sent back, leading them to call for reform of this ash. And when we return amendments to the elected members, they are limited on the programme motion of the time they can spend on what we send back.

And by the way, the programme motion has been changed for this Bill. But back up to now, January. Elected members need more time for scrutiny. The government has to return some of the power to Parliament. It's taken away with programme motions designed to fit in more bills rather than better bills. And all I'm asking is for a list from the government on what he does. Not allowed to be scrutinised, to be put back the buck where it belongs to the government.

I'm not complaining about the Commons here. I first raised this issue about a decade ago, but I accepted on information I got. It was too complicated. And on July the 16th I attended the Lord speaker's lecture in the River room, and I raised it again about the fact that we should have a note of what has not been discussed when a bill arrives in this House that was in the previous House, there was support on that evening on the 16th of July, which I decided I better do something about this.

And this bill is the first opportunity, but it can be done in every bill. As I've informed my noble friend. On the fifth, on the 5th of August. And he regrets he can't be today. Lord Hussain, in a letter to the times, made exactly the same point based on his former experience as the clerk to the Commons. Now this is Lords on the 14th of July, right towards the end of the session, when the Commons got the Report stage, which had been waiting for, of course, from November last year they were allowed a four hour debate.

They had three divisions during that debate on issues that the time allowed. And then at 6:10 p.m. column 872, and I quote, proceedings interrupted. Programme order. 3rd of November 2025, the Deputy Speaker put forth, with the questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time. So what was that business? After four hours, that programme motion forthwith ten new clauses, six schedules and over 70 amendments into this Bill on the not on the nod, just talking about, oh, they didn't have time to do the odd clause.

Ten new clauses, six schedules and over 70 amendments were approved on the nod because of the guillotine motion. Now it's over to us. Now all I'm saying is we should have a list and the box stops with the government. It's the government here, not the members. And it's quite a simple thing to have. Do we know as what hasn't been debated? Because the incentive, therefore down the other end, is to demand more time on the bills. So there is less work to come back to them after we've done our job.

I

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beg to move. The original question was that this bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House, since Committee of the whole House, since when an amendment has been moved to to the at the end, to insert the words set out on the Order Paper, the question I now therefore have to put is that this amendment be

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agreed to. You're quite done with me yet,

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You're quite done with me yet, my Lord, my Lord, this is quite an unusual motion, and, as I understand it, not only about this

22:08

Lord Lemos, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Labour)

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Bill at all, but about the general scrutiny of legislation in the House of Commons. As I understand House of Commons. As I understand it, the entirety of this bill was considered in the Commons Public Bill Committee in the usual way, Bill Committee in the usual way, and again by the whole House on report in the Commons the selection of proposed amendments for debate of proposed amendments for debate and for decision is not a matter for the government, but all selected amendments were debated in selected amendments were debated in that House.

In that House, as usual way, my Lords, both houses work differently and they have their own procedures and practices. It is not for this House nor the government to criticise those proceedings. In the other place, as I'm sure noble Lords would want, would not want them to comment on the way we conduct our business. I would hope, therefore, that the noble Lord

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amendment. They.

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They. My noble friend, wasn't listening to what I said. The listening to what I said. The government does the programme motion, not the members. It's the government that proposes the guillotine. It's the government motion that puts the dates down and the times allowed the government, the times allowed the government, not the members. The members agreed because it's on a three line whip and the government decides whether to make a long motion with more time or a short one with less time.

22:09

Lord Rooker (Labour)

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It's the government that does it. And every bill is covered, by the way. I mean, all I'm saying, look way. I mean, all I'm saying, look at the Commons, Hansard. I am not criticising the Commons. We're not allowed to do that. The point is the members need to be strengthened against the government. The government's in charge of both government's in charge of both houses, don't forget, and the programme motion still applies when we've done our amendments to this we've done our amendments to this bill, they'll go back to the Commons to be delivered under the programme motion.

They'll have maybe an hour or 90 minutes to look at what we said and there'll be complaints about, oh, it's the Lords again. We need to reform them. The government whips will be saying that to Labour members who will be complaining about the work we're sending them. So it's about time we got a bit of candour and openness and transparency on this issue. And it's true. I tabled this amendment before the end of July. The government saw the amendment and withdrew the motion.

The. That's why it's only just appeared. I was asked, would I do it on another bill? I said, I propose to do it on every bill simply because it's got to the point where the pressure on us and the deliberations in the other place about this place, because we're following the rules to do scrutiny and we don't have guillotines, we don't have programme motions. We have to look at what we need to concentrate on, and what we need to concentrate on is what the Commons has not been allowed to concentrate on, because the government has took the time away for them to do the job properly, and at this time I'm tempted, but I'm not.

But I would ask the Minister to go and look at the Commons, Hansard and get better briefed. The government said at least five weeks warning of the motion, because they saw it on the Order Paper, and the commencement motion was withdrawn at late July. So, and I haven't done anything about it. Lord Hussain letter was complete news to me. He regrets it can't be here this evening, otherwise he'd be speaking in support. But I'm coming back on

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this. But I beg to withdraw. Is it your Lordships pleasure that this amendment be withdrawn? that this amendment be withdrawn? Amendment is finally withdrawn. The question is that the original motion be agreed to, as many of

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motion be agreed to, as many of content. The contents have it. my Lords, adjourn. adjourn.

This debate has concluded

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