Public Office (Accountability) Bill: Exclusion

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask His Majesty’s Government why Members of Parliament and members of the House of Lords are excluded from Clause 11, “Offence of misleading the public”, of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill; and what consideration they have given to removing this exclusion.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, what a small, select and charming group we are to discuss a topic that could feature quite high in news media later, because I think it is an issue that the public will care about.

The Public Office (Accountability) Bill has rightly been recognised for its proposed duty of candour, but there is another provision within it, less understood, yet vastly more consequential: the creation, for the first time in modern democratic history, of a criminal offence of misleading the public. It provides that, where a public official, including our very own Prime Minister, knowingly or recklessly deceives the public on a matter of significant public concern, and if that deception is proven to the criminal standard, a prison sentence of up to two years may follow. In short, the Prime Minister is proposing to criminalise lying in politics for the first time and he is leading by example by applying it to himself. This has never happened before and I congratulate the Government on being brave and decent enough to criminalise lying by their own Ministers. It is a very big step.

This Bill has been commonly called the Hillsborough law because of the stadium crush in 1989 in Hillsborough, Sheffield, in which 97 Liverpool supporters were unlawfully killed. That was followed by years in which police and other officials advanced misleading accounts that falsely blamed the victims, deceived families over the pain that their loved ones suffered before death and obscured institutional failings. The sustained campaign by the bereaved families for truth and accountability led to the Hillsborough Law Now movement and to the introduction in Parliament of this Bill. It is intended to impose a statutory duty of candour and to criminalise serious deception by public officials. It is worth noting that the inaccurate account by Sheffield police has never been corrected, which is something that the Government should resolve. Among others, the Hicks family lost two daughters and they, and other still-grieving families, deserve the truth.

This Bill will correct an inconsistency. For centuries, we have criminalised deception in almost every professional sphere, except for some politicians. Fraud is an offence, perjury is an offence and false advertising is unlawful. Under consumer protection legislation, tradesmen may not mislead the public about serious matters. In finance, commerce, the courts and taxation, truthfulness is not optional; it is legally enforceable. We already accept, under the Representation of the People Act, that dishonest statements about a rival candidate during an election may be criminal. The principle that deliberate political falsehoods can be legislated against is therefore not novel. It has existed for decades without overwhelming the courts or extinguishing debate.

No equivalent statutory standard has governed broader public claims made by politicians. That anomaly can be set against the collapse of public trust. The Ipsos Veracity Index once again ranks politicians among the least trusted professions in the UK. That distrust weakens democratic consent, discourages civic participation and feeds a corrosive cynicism that democratic institutions cannot be trusted and that Parliament is full of liars. It makes the lives of Members of the Commons and the Lords much harder and doubtless impacts our well-being as well.

But the Bill offers some hope. The proposed new offence of misleading the public attempts to respond to that crisis, not by criminalising opinion, silencing debate or punishing error or failed prediction but by addressing something narrower and more serious: deliberate or reckless deception about matters of significant concern to the public, proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Some have raised concerns about free expression. Those concerns deserve respect, but the offence, as drafted, is confined to intentional or reckless deception. It does not criminalise political disagreement, capture advocacy or police rhetoric. It does not apply to anything said in Parliament, as privilege is still in place. It targets only proven deceit elsewhere, such as online, on television, on the radio or at events. I hope that this narrow definition will stop people with expensive lawyers launching malicious legal cases in the hope of silencing legitimate criticisms. In short, this provision affirms a simple democratic proposition: those who exercise public authority should not be permitted to lie to the public with impunity.

So far, so good. Yet the following exemptions have been brought to my attention by campaigner Marcus Ball of ExecProsec, who is working with Jennifer Nadel of Compassion in Politics and Luke Myer MP from the other place. As currently drafted, the proposition excludes some parliamentarians. Civil servants would be bound by it, as would police officers, members of the Armed Forces, NHS staff, Government Ministers and even the Prime Minister, but Back-Bench Members of Parliament and Members of your Lordships’ House would not, nor would the shadow Cabinet or the Opposition in their entirety.

There may be procedural explanations for excluding Peers and Back-Bench MPs, and even technical constitutional arguments, but I wonder what the public will think. They will see a law that criminalises deception by nearly every category of public official except the very people who are making the Bill become law. They will not be persuaded by constitutional nuance; they will draw a much simpler conclusion. If Parliament legislates a requirement not to lie for others while reserving exemption for itself, the perception will be that we parliamentarians are hypocrites. That perception will endure each time the offence is invoked, a prosecution is considered, accountability is pursued or any parliamentarian is accused of being dishonest. The public will be reminded that parliamentarians chose to criminalise lying by almost all public officials apart from themselves.

Equality before the law is the foundation of democratic legitimacy. If nurses, teachers, civil servants, Ministers and even the Prime Minister are to be subject to this standard, it is impossible to persuasively justify a position in which Members of either House of Parliament are not. Surely, those who make the law should be subject to the same standard of honesty that we, as legislators, impose on others.

This House has long seen itself as the guardian of constitutional principle. We are uniquely placed to consider not only how legislation functions in the courts but how it will be understood by the public. I am concerned that if we do not apply this law to ourselves, we will cause reputational self-harm. We are legislators; we pass laws that relate to everyone else, so why should they not relate to us as well?

To conclude, I have a couple of questions for the Minister. I sense that the Government will probably not accept what I am saying, but I wonder whether she will meet me at a future date to discuss this, perhaps with one or two lawyers who can argue more persuasively than I can. Why are Members of Parliament, in both Houses, excluded from Clause 11? Will the Government give serious consideration to removing that exclusion, so that the Bill may stand as a testament to integrity rather than a monument to hypocrisy?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union, which may well end up defending people as a result of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, given that it creates a new speech offence. As we have heard, the offence is that of misleading the public. A public authority or public official commits an offence if, first, in their capacity as such an authority or official, they act with the intention of misleading the public or are reckless as to whether their act will do so; and, secondly, they know, or ought to know, that their act is seriously improper.

The problem is not that MPs and Peers are immune to being prosecuted for this offence but that the carve-out is not large enough. According to my reading of the Bill, MPs or Peers acting as public officials—that is, Ministers of the Crown—would be liable. This is a gold-embossed invitation to the Jolyon Maughams of this world. It will unleash a wave of politically motivated lawfare. Is that really what we want?

As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, just pointed out, the new offence of misleading the public is intended to replace the offence of misconduct in public office. Let us not forget that attempts have been made by political activists to bring private prosecutions against their opponents for committing that offence. For instance, in 2019, an outfit called the Brexit Justice Group brought a private prosecution against Boris Johnson for misconduct in public office because, according to the BJG, he had knowingly misled the electorate in the EU referendum campaign by claiming that leaving would bring a bounty of £350 million a week. It was an obviously vexatious case, but a magistrate issued three summonses against the then Prime Minister before the case was eventually thrown out in the High Court.

Should this Bill become law, we can look forward to a slew of similar cases. Rachel Reeves, for instance, might find herself in the dock for claiming that she would not raise taxes on working people, while Ed Miliband could have his collar felt for promising that household energy bills would fall by £300.

If the Bill is amended along the lines that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, wants, would not her party’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election find herself in difficulty—assuming that she becomes an MP? During her now infamous campaign video in Urdu, released a few days ago, she said that Reform UK wants to put higher taxes on people who were born abroad. That is misleading, to put it at its most charitable. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said there are safeguards in the Bill to prevent private prosecutions, but what is to stop members of the public bringing judicial reviews against the police for not prosecuting politicians for misleading the public?

The Free Speech Union recently defended an SNP activist and editor of a blog, “Wings Over Scotland”, who had supposedly said something transphobic on social media. A trans activist, Lynsay Watson, tried to sue Greater Manchester Police for not prosecuting him. I am happy to say that he failed, but that is not to say that others will not attempt to sue the police for not arresting lying politicians.

I do not want to see Hannah Spencer behind bars for misleading the public any more than I do the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. Candidates campaign in poetry and govern in prose. If they fail to keep their promises or traffic in obvious mistruths, there is already an adequate mechanism for punishing them—the ballot box. Rather than extend the scope of the Bill to include MPs and Peers, let us limit it to make sure that Members of both Houses, in whatever capacity, are properly excluded.

I would go further and urge the Government to amend the Bill to exclude civil servants too—and not just those working in the intelligence services. As a recent piece in the Economist pointed out, making Whitehall officials liable for prosecution for misleading the public could have disastrous unintended consequences. It would mean fewer civil servants willing to take responsibility for decisions or giving ministerial advice, and more decision-making by committee to dilute liability. Rather than providing Ministers with timely, sensible advice, they will mitigate the risk of a prosecution down the line by obfuscation and delay. To quote from the Economist:

“Ministers complain that the civil service is bogged in a ‘sludge’ of slow decision-making. But officials will have an incentive to take more detailed minutes, keep more records and give risk-assessments even lengthier consideration to insure against future court challenges”.


I am reminded of the effect of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Rather than leading to greater transparency on official decision-making, it resulted in MPs, Peers and Whitehall officials abandoning email in favour of WhatsApp, with disappearing messages switched on—less transparency rather than more.

The intentions behind the Bill are undoubtedly good. The families of those who died in the Hillsborough tragedy deserve to hear the truth from public officials, particularly those testifying to various inquiries, but it is hard to legislate for candour. To pretend that the Bill will

“once and for all end the culture of cover-ups and hiding the truth”,

as the Labour manifesto promised, is, I am afraid, just another example of misleading the public.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for raising the profile of our candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election. That is very kind of him.