Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I start with apologies for the fact that I am commuting between the Chamber and the Grand Committee because of my involvement in the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.

I very much welcome this Bill and profoundly thank the campaigners, survivors and bereaved families of Hillsborough, Grenfell, Post Office Horizon, infected blood, Windrush, nuclear testing, LGB personnel in the Armed Forces, grooming gangs, pelvic mesh and other scandals. With such a long list and long processes, one wonders: is the British state uniquely bad at preventing and righting injustices?

The vow is “never again”. However, at the end of my remarks, I will raise fears about other areas where similar issues might be arising, even if they are not yet generally recognised as scandals.

I worry that the Bill puts the chicken before the egg. Arguably, Parts 1 and 2 need to be reversed so that the obligation of ethical conduct comes first. If ethical conduct could be embedded, many scandals and inquiries, with their suffering, heartache and expense, could be avoided. It was bad enough for people to suffer wrongful actions and miscarriages of justice, but even worse that these became examples of institutional defensiveness, denial, obfuscation, delay and, as both the present Prime Minister and previous ones have said, cover-ups.

I remind those who oppose the ECHR, such as those on the Benches to my right—who are even excluding from their party candidates who are sensible on this issue—that it was because of the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act that inquests were reformed and justice was 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”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/25; col. 668.]

Victims of miscarriages of justice want the truth, even if they have to wait a long time for it. Last week, in relation to Greenlandic women who had contraceptive devices inserted without consent, Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, said: “I believe it is never too late to do the right thing”.

Justice is something people 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”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/25; cols. 680.]

We 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 other areas of policy and practice where I fear scandals are brewing. They 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 “gender-affirming care” may end up as an NHS scandal like infected blood. Journalist Nick Wallis, who did a lot of work on the 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”. He described the

“NHS enthusiasm for gender ideology”

as

“a form of medical malpractice”.

He went on to say:

“When the growing number of people who feel they have been ruined by gender surgery begin to find their voices, we’ll 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 that 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.

With regard to sentences of imprisonment for public protection, I said in a debate on the Sentencing Bill:

“This is not a technical issue, it is an ethical issue, and we are all begging the Minister to deliver the justice that has been called for from all sides of the House this afternoon ”.—[Official Report, 3/12/25; col. 1812.]


So I very much welcome the announcement by the Prime Minister and, I believe, the Justice Secretary—I am not sure whether he has done it yet—anticipating legislation to end these sentences by the end of this Parliament. Marc Conway, the CEO of the NGO UNGRIPP—the United Group for Reform of IPP—reacted by saying:

“Legislation alone cannot undo 20 years of damage, but it is the essential first step toward healing”.


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 refer to the case of two former senior judges who are colleagues of ours in this House. Although retired from judicial service in this country, they 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 1,900 political prisoners jailed, I contend that their continued service legitimises repression—including that of 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 Lord Sumption left the Hong Kong court two years ago, he warned that the territory was

“slowly becoming a totalitarian state”.

I understand that this can be only a personal decision of the noble and learned Lords concerned. 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 none the less hope that the principles of this welcome Bill might reverberate beyond its strict scope, including in this case.