Duty of Candour for Public Authorities and Legal Representation for Bereaved Families
Debate between Josh Babarinde and Andrew George(1 week ago)
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Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) on securing this debate. On behalf of my party, I too pay tribute to the Hillsborough families in this landmark debate.
After years of delay by the last Conservative Government —the Conservatives are, shamefully, barely represented here today—Liberal Democrats in Parliament and Liberal Democrat councillors such as Carl Cashman welcomed this Government’s commitment in the King’s Speech to create a statutory duty of candour on public authorities to force them to tell the truth. However, given the urgent need for such a duty, it is unacceptable that the Hillsborough law was not introduced in time for the 36th anniversary of the disaster, as the Prime Minister himself had promised.
Ninety-seven men, women and children lost their lives as a result of the shameful events on that terrible day in 1989, yet the families of the victims were forced to wait decades for the truth, in the wake of institutional silence and deceit from state institutions. For years they were told that Liverpool fans were to blame, but they were not. It was police incompetence, a failure of safety and then a cover-up—a deliberate attempt by public officials to shift blame, rewrite the narrative and protect institutions instead of people. It was not only public institutions that were responsible for warping narratives. I will not name the title, but we all know a particular newspaper that still lives a legacy of shame for the way it demonised fans on that day.
A legal duty of candour would not erase that tragedy, but it might have spared the families years of gaslighting, indignity and conflict. Similar is true of the Grenfell disaster, as the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) has powerfully said. Seventy-two lives were lost in that shocking disaster, including that of emerging photographer and artist Khadija Saye, who I knew. It was a tragedy that should never have happened, and a scandal that revealed deep systemic failures in not only fire safety but the way public authorities treat working-class communities, especially when they are black or brown.
Even after the fire, we saw the same pattern again: a slow trickle of information, shifting stories and an instinct—a culture—of institutional self-preservation. We must ask ourselves, how many times will we allow this cycle to repeat? How many lives must be lost before we accept that the public deserve honesty from those in power?
Andrew George
My hon. Friend is right about the need for the state to be open and honest in all these cases. As I mentioned earlier, the duty of candour already exists in the NHS. Nevertheless, in inquests where the duty of candour should be to the fore, the state comes along with barristers, lawyers and their supporters, and the victims of actions in the past are not represented at all. If the same resource that went into protecting the reputations of NHS staff went into supporting patients, these issues would not happen.