Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank the hon. Lady for her service on the Public Bill Committee. Her thoughtful contributions there have made the Bill better. I will cite the great Pete Wetherby KC now at this Dispatch Box, and I hope I do him justice: there is no balance to be struck on national security, because national security should always come first. That is Pete Wetherby’s position, that is the families’ position, and that is the Government’s position. The Government always have to protect national security, and we will always do that, but the families have a right to the truth. I want to restate that there is no carve-out in this Bill for the intelligence services. They will be bound by a legal duty of candour, and it will apply to individual agents. All we need to do is find the mechanism by which that information is passed on to an investigation or inquiry. We are working at pace with the intelligence services and the families to find a way forward. This is very complex. It sounds simple, but I assure the hon. Lady that it is not. I am a woman on a mission, and I am determined to do this as soon as possible, but we need to get it right, and that is what this Government will do.

[Emma Lewell (South Shields) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her statement, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) for the leadership that he has shown on this. It is right that we have a pause, but the Minister will know how distressing this is for the families, and about the emotional and physical toll that going back and forth to and from Parliament for decades has had on them. They came so close to this Bill being passed, only to encounter further disappointments and setbacks. This is the only experience that my constituents whose children were killed in the Manchester arena attack have had of meetings in Parliament to date, so can she assure us that when the Bill comes back, every single part of it will have the full involvement and support of the campaigners and families, and that there will be no more short-notice, unexpected amendments from the Government?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and I want to place on the record my sincere thanks to her for all her tenacious campaigning on behalf of her constituents who have been through the unimaginable pain, trauma and grief of losing their children in the most horrific circumstances and then being denied the truth. It was a privilege to meet her constituents with the Prime Minister last week and to hear their truth, and I thank them again from the Dispatch Box for sharing their pain with us and sharing directly why this Bill is so important and why we need to get it right. Hearing their truth and hearing from the families is exactly why the Government have taken the decision to pause this legislation so that we can get it right. We are determined to do that by working with the families and hearing from them, and by working with the intelligence services.