Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter]

I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there. In conclusion, this is a landmark piece of legislation, which we should all welcome, and I commend it to the House.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

I will speak to two amendments, but first, I pay tribute to the Hillsborough families, and to two people in particular, with whom I have dealt personally. The first is Margaret Aspinall. As a new Culture Secretary in 2010, I made some ill-chosen comments about the Hillsborough tragedy, and I met Margaret Aspinall afterwards. I apologised, and she graciously accepted that apology. I have always been struck by not just her tenacity, but her dignity and decency. Today has been a long journey, but if the Bill saves lives, as we all want it to, she will deserve more credit than any politician, as will every one of the families of the 97.

I also want to mention Bishop James Jones, who was chair of the independent panel. He gave the world the phrase that summed up more than any other what went wrong: the patronising disposition of unaccountable power. What is remarkable about Bishop James is that he did not hang up his hat after publishing the report in 2012, but went on to advise successive Home Secretaries on how to implement his recommendations, and then chaired the Hillsborough families’ experiences review panel. I asked for his help in chairing the Gosport independent panel, and he went on to chair the Gosport family forum, from which he has just stepped down for health reasons. To me, he exemplifies Senator John McCain’s famous words about

“the honor we earn and the love we give if at a moment in our lives we sacrifice for something greater than self-interest.”

I know that the whole House will want to mark his public service.

Let me turn to my new clause and amendment. New clause 11 addresses a profound failure in the way that the duty of candour works in the NHS. In 2014, I put in place the regulations that applied that duty to the NHS, and when I tell the House what those regulations require of the NHS, Members will immediately see why they are failing so badly. They state that if severe harm or death is caused to a patient, the hospital must tell the patient or their family promptly, or as soon as is practically reasonable. It must give a truthful account of what is known and what happened, and it must offer a sincere apology. As witnesses to countless subsequent inquiries affecting the constituents of many Members here have said, that simply does not happen. Families have to fight for years to find the truth about what happened to a loved one, and all too often, they find that mistakes are ignored or covered up. When a tragedy is covered up, it is then repeated time after time, which is precisely what those families are campaigning to stop.

Why do those cover-ups happen? There are many reasons, but one in particular is that trust lawyers advise trusts not to say anything at all when there is a risk of legal action. Let me tell the House about baby Ben Condon, who died at eight weeks old in 2015, when I was Health Secretary, after delays in giving him antibiotics. His father Allyn says that consultants apologised to him privately, saying that they had got it wrong, and then said the exact opposite at an inquest a few months later. I believe that that was a breach of the duty of candour regulations that were already in place, and that lawyers, even today, are giving unlawful advice to clinicians and trusts. As a result, the duty of candour in the NHS is being widely bypassed, and that will continue until we deal with this loophole. New clause 11 requires the Department of Health and Social Care

“to ensure that legal services provided to NHS bodies…are consistent with the statutory duty of candour and the principles of openness”.

It requires the Department or designated body to ensure that those standards are met, and that the situation be dealt with appropriately when they are not.

Amendment 150 does a different job. The Bill requires people working for public bodies to tell the truth to those conducting investigations or reviews, but it does not require them to tell the truth to families, who then have to wait, often for years, until the review is published. The amendment requires that information to be provided to a person or family who has, or may have been, harmed.

I recognise that the House will not divide on either the new clause or the amendment, so neither will become law as part of this Bill. My request to Ministers is that they include them in the Health Bill; they would be in scope, and would have a dramatic impact in preventing the anger of NHS-bereaved families, which is absolutely the equal of the anger of the Hillsborough families that we are trying to address today. My reason for wanting to do that is straightforward. A Health Secretary can pass new laws, introduce new technology and bring down waiting lists, but the only real change that stands the test of time is culture change. Culture change means replacing cover-ups, buck-passing and a blame culture with openness, trust and learning, but there will not be trust if patients and families are not told the truth. We will never learn from mistakes if we cover them up. We need real change—culture change—to put that right.

[David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)]

I started my speech on Second Reading in November last year by saying:

“This has been a long time coming.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2025; Vol. 774, c. 681.]

Even more time has passed since then, but thanks to the determination, strength and effort of many survivors and campaigners—some of whom are in the Gallery today—and of those on the Labour Benches, and to the support of a number of dedicated people in this place, we are here at last, with the finish line in sight again.