Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Roger, on this historic and momentous Bill Committee. With your permission, I will say a few words about just how momentous this is.

Last week, this Committee heard evidence directly from the Hillsborough families about the Bill and what it means to them. I know that the Committee will agree that that was a huge privilege for us. The Bill is of great and national importance to so many people up and down the country, and we will not play politics with this legislation. I hope my colleagues in the Opposition will do the same. What we will do is listen: we will listen to the families, Hillsborough Law Now and the members of this Committee. It is right that they and the Committee push us and challenge us. They have my commitment that if we can find ways to improve the Bill, we will.

Finally, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby and my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston. They have each tirelessly campaigned for justice for the Hillsborough families, and played no small part in seeing this legislation brought forward. I am honoured to have them by my side in Committee.

Of course, we have all said this time and again, but we would absolutely not be here without the families. This is for them, and for those who have campaigned tirelessly for so long to seek justice and to ensure that no one ever has to go through what they went through. This is not just for the Hillsborough families, but for anyone who has experienced cover-up or had to fight for the truth, and for the memories of all those who are no longer with us.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. As we consider the clause and new clause 2, I want to be clear that the Opposition recognise the importance of the Bill’s overarching aims. Candour, transparency, frankness and, above all, the requirement that public officials act in the public interest are principles that I am sure Members from all parties support.

As we commented on during evidence sessions about the chief coroner, it would be quite wrong to portray good-faith efforts to ensure that we give due consideration to each and every possible implication of the Bill as in any way not giving due regard to its noble aims, in particular the considerable effort and good intentions of the many campaigners supporting it, including the ones we heard from during the evidence sessions. As the Minister commented, I do not think that anyone could have been anything but deeply moved and reflective on hearing the experiences that the witnesses went through in such appalling circumstances. They were a limited group, but one made up not just of those affected by Hillsborough but those affected by many other scandals in which the state and its bodies covered up and mistreated people.

Ultimately, even if we believe that the Bill could be improved, and we will hold the Government to account for any unintended consequences, we support the Bill and do not expect to oppose it on Third Reading. I hope that that is an important message for the campaigners supporting it. However, we want to probe the Government’s thinking and suggest possible improvements.

Before we come to the specifics of our new clause, I will comment on clause 1 as a whole, as it lays out the core purpose of the Bill and highlights just how far the political class as a whole has to come in delivering candour, and how contentious these matters can be. In the very weeks we have been considering this Bill, with the Government professing to want to drive further improvements in the candour and frankness of accountability, we have been having a heated and highly contested public debate about what constitutes candour and frankness. I raise that debate not to further discuss it in Committee—it would not be appropriate to engage in it for its merits—but just to highlight exactly how contentious such things are. We have a Chancellor who, in my view, has clearly failed to operate with candour and frankness, but I am sure that view is fiercely opposed by other members of the Committee.

[The Chair]

Order. I ask the Opposition Front Bencher to stick to the matter under debate.

[Dr Mullan]

As I said, that is an example. I am not wishing to make the point—[Interruption.] I have said quite clearly that you will disagree with me on that, but that is the point that I am making.

[The Chair]

Order. “You” is me. I am not agreeing or disagreeing.

[Dr Mullan]

Thank you, Sir Roger. Committee members have been fiercely disagreeing on something that relates directly to the matters that we are considering today on frankness and candour. I think that demonstrates just how challenging these things will be. We are the politicians who are putting forward this legislation.

[Maria Eagle (Liverpool Garston) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Member accept that matters of party political difference in a political system are not the same as telling the truth about what happened in a disaster or an event? There is a distinction.

[Dr Mullan]

Absolutely. The Bill is focused on those examples that are clear and egregious, where it is easy to say that there has been a failure of candour or a deliberate attempt to cover up. The legislation will cover many other situations, however, including Members of Parliament. As Members of Parliament, we are expected to operate with a degree of frankness and candour, and yet just this week we have been fiercely debating whether one of our own has or has not done that. It is important for Members to reflect on the wideness of the ramifications outside the purely obvious examples of what might constitute candour, or a lack of it.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we have, in yesterday’s resignation of the chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, quite a sensible example of what he is trying to express? That gentleman was due to be in front of a Select Committee of this House this morning, but by resigning, he has skipped being held to account for what he must know about the situation. Candour should surely also apply to those who have resigned.

If I may, Sir Roger, I refer back to the fact that one of the deepest problems has been the resignation of senior police officers. Because they have resigned, they skip away over the horizon and are not able to be held to account. There is only one way that someone should not be held to account, which is through not being on this earth any longer.

[The Chair]

Order. Sorry I have to keep intervening; let us get this right from the beginning, and then it will stay right all the way through. Interventions must be interventions, not speeches. There is a degree of leeway in Committee that does not exist on the Floor of the House, but nevertheless, please try to confine interventions to brevity if possible, because otherwise Members will be here all night. I concede to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle that, while the Bill clearly relates —and has related very heavily in terms of evidence—to Hillsborough and Grenfell, it covers a much wider range of issues. We need to remember that.

[Dr Mullan]

Thank you for that further clarification, Sir Roger.

These issues are absolutely live and happening all the time—this week alone, we have seen examples of it—and we need to understand the implications of the Bill. I am far from alone in recognising the difficulty in defining terms such as “candour” and “public interest”. John Coggon, professor of law at the University of Bristol law school, writes:

“The public interest has no single, fixed definition. Even as a technical term of art its sense varies both for being context dependent and for being a question that may be settled by different sorts of institutional actor. It may, for instance, demand consideration of national security, national economic interest, protection of health, maintenance of a justice system, protection of fundamental rights. And determinations may be made by courts, politicians, legislators, executive agencies, and so on. Each can and will bring different forms and ranges of consideration to the process of determining what the public interest demands, and whether those demands are compelling.”

Anyone who has spent any time inside a public body—a police force, a regulator or a Government Department—knows that the public interest can mean very different things to different people. It is shaped by context, role, circumstance and sometimes professional norms. What one official believes to be in the public interest, a Minister, senior civil servant or statutory body might see very differently. That is not mere theory; it is the daily reality of modern governance.

Questions were raised during the evidence sessions about how the public interest might be used inappropriately in defence of an allegation of misconduct in public office. As new clause 2 points to, paragraph 1(8)(b) of schedule 1 specifically allows for the withholding of information in the public interest. Failing in that area could lead to both those we would wish not to be prosecuted being prosecuted and those we want to see prosecuted escaping justice. It is an important area of how the Bill will operate.

I am not so ambitious as to suggest that through the Bill the Committee will be able to create a perfect definition of public interest, but I speak in support of the new clause in an attempt to ensure that the Government recognise that they need to properly engage with that issue if the Bill is to be successful. A definition of the public interest need not be exhaustive, as I have said, but the wide-ranging ramifications of the Bill place an onus on the Government to ensure that the frontline civil servant of any kind has somewhere to look and turn to when wrestling with these matters—a starting point that might help them to structure their thinking and make decisions.

By failing to define the term at all, even in the most basic way, the Bill risks giving us a duty that is challenging to operate for a junior civil servant. It risks more uncertainty about compliance, inconsistency between institutions and even potential litigation where prosecutors or courts are left to decide after the fact what Parliament must have meant. The obvious challenging scenario is when officials need to consider situations where there are competing public interests—national security versus transparency, value for money versus speed of delivery, or personal privacy versus public accountability. Without more assistance for thinking those matters through, how does an official protect themselves from the—possibly criminal—allegation that their judgment call was not in the public interest among competing interests?

The new clause does not attempt to dictate exactly what public interest must mean; it simply requires the Secretary of State to set out a structure or framework in regulations, subject to approval by both Houses. Ultimately, if this legislation is to achieve the cultural change that the Government claim it will, the foundations must be clear and easy to understand. Public officials should not be left purely guessing what Parliament might have meant, or how we expected them to weigh these issues—Parliament should tell them. New clause 2 offers the Government the opportunity to do exactly that, and I hope they will take it.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Clause 1 sets out the purpose of the Bill as a whole to ensure that public authorities and public officials perform their functions at all times with candour, transparency and frankness, and in the public interest. As the clause describes, the Bill sets out those duties in the substantive provisions that follow. The clause does not have any separate legal effect itself; it is designed to set out clearly and simply the intention behind the Bill to assist those who will be subject to it and the general public in their understanding.

I thank the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle for tabling new clause 2, which seeks to require the Secretary of State to define exactly what is meant by the term “public interest” in clause 1. Clause 1 is a purpose clause and does not have any legal effect in and of itself, separate from the other provisions in the Bill. It sets out the intention behind the Bill, and how the Bill achieves that intention by describing the relevant provisions.

In this context, acting in the public interest means fulfilling the obligations and duties in the remainder of the Bill that arise from it; it means being candid at inquiries and investigations; and it means that those working for public authorities must adhere to the codes and ethics required by the Bill. In general, “acting in the public interest” is usually not defined in legislation, as the hon. Gentleman said. This is because what is in the public interest will depend on the circumstance and context of that particular situation. Seeking to define what it means might have the effect of narrowing what could be considered to be in the public interest.

In schedule 1, the public interest is referred to in the context of public interest immunity. Public interest immunity is an established concept in law: it is a rule of evidence where documents are withheld if their disclosure would be injurious to the public interest. What is the “public interest” will be dependent on the particular circumstances, and we should not seek to constrain this or undermine a very long-established legal doctrine that is applied by the courts. The Inquiries Act 2005 and other legislation already contain provisions of this kind to ensure that appropriate protections are attached to sensitive information, which the Bill is replicating. I hope that clarifies the purpose of clause 1 and why defining “public interest” would not be appropriate and could actually hinder proceedings.

[Dr Mullan]

The Minister rightly describes how tightly the courts consider these matters in detail. As the Bill puts a whole range of very junior civil servants in the firing line, does she at least accept that guidance or materials might be helpful to assist a broader audience in how they approach these issues in their day-to-day work?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I welcome that intervention and the whole purpose of this legislation is to ensure exactly that. Obviously, there will be guidance in the codes of ethics that are produced, and public authorities will probably provide training for their individual public servants who will now be captured by the Bill, if, as I hope, it receives Royal Assent and becomes an Act. I am due to attend a session at the University of Liverpool to look at exactly how we can implement the Bill, should it become legislation and reach the statute book. All of that is being taken into consideration to advise everyone about what is expected of them under the duty of candour. Therefore, I urge the hon. Gentleman not to press new clause 2 to a vote, and I pledge to work with him on exactly that.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Morrison]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. These amendments do nothing more than fix something in the current draft of the Bill, which seems inadvertently to have carved out the security services—an area that could be strengthened, as we heard during the evidence session last week. The amendments seek to extend the duty of candour and assistance to the intelligence services as organisations, ensuring that they as bodies are required to be open and co-operative with the inquiries and any investigations. The amendment balances accountability with national security, by stating that direction will not be given to public officials

“if it would require the official to provide information relating to security or intelligence”.

Several of our witnesses last week gave evidence that laid out various examples of how the security services had failed to be fully candid, disregarded accountability, and, at times, misled inquiries. We also know that the Government assured campaigners, Members and other interested parties that there would be no carve-out for the security services in the Bill. The security services do an incredible job in keeping us safe and ensuring that our country’s interests are protected. It is right that their work is covered by the secrecy Act; no one wishes to change that. However, because of that power they should be held to highest standards of accountability. We know that in recent history that has not been the case.

Last week we heard from Pete Weatherby, who, as well as working with the Hillsborough families, supported several families impacted by the Manchester Arena bombing. He said:

“There was a major failure of the intelligence services and the way they dealt with the aftermath of the bombing…MI5 then put an incorrect narrative—a false narrative—to the inquiry itself. The judge, the chair of the inquiry, found that the corporate case that it had put was incorrect.”––[Official Report, Public Office (Accountability) Public Bill Committee, 27 November 2025; c. 6, Q3.]

The amendment would ensure, as much as any law can, that that could not happen again, by explicitly ensuring that the security services are accountable to this Bill and therefore to a public who willingly consent to how these organisations work to protect us and our country. This amendment would not endanger national security. It would not impact the way in which some evidence is required to be provided in closed sessions. It would provide the security services with the necessary safeguards to ensure that secret and classified information is protected.

This is what happens now. We heard from the journalist Daniel De Simone, who worked on the agent X story, where the security services tried to mislead and were found out. His testimony stated:

“I do not think it is wrong that there are special advocates in closed material procedures; it is now an established part of a court process. What it does do, though, is place a special responsibility on MI5 to be candid, because their evidence is often very important in very significant cases, where there has been significant loss of life, where people’s citizenship is being removed or where people are being deprived of their liberties.”––[Official Report, Public Office (Accountability) Public Bill Committee, 27 November 2025; c. 95, Q138.]

Because of that, it is vital that we do not allow any carving out, intentional or otherwise, of the security services, to ensure that they, too, are held to account and must tell the truth. That will strengthen not only their work, but the trust that we place in them.

[Dr Mullan]

I emphasise that we need clarity on this. Those of us who were able to attend the meeting with the intelligence services will know that they seemed to provide quite a clear account of their individual personal responsibility and all the ways in which they thought the Bill would affect them. That was quite clearly contradicted in our evidence from other witnesses. I am grateful to the Minister for sending round a further note to Committee members this morning, and for our brief chat ahead of this sitting. Even that note raises further contradictions, however, because it says, and I quote, that “the individual public officials working for the UK intelligence services are capable of being caught by the offence of failing to comply with the duty of candour”. It lists some other ones, but it includes the duty of candour. Further down, it says, “the Bill specifies that the duty of candour and assistance can only be addressed to public authorities and not individual public officials”.

The Minister was able to give me a brief, informal explanation of that, but I do think this is extremely important. It may be that people are happy for the security services to be excluded to a certain extent, but we have to vote on a shared understanding of what exactly the Bill does in relation to them as entire organisations, as well as to the people who work for them and those who are in charge. I would be grateful if the Minister provided some clarity on that.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank hon. Members for raising those important points. In this Bill, we have aimed to ensure candour while protecting national security. As it stands, inquiries and investigations will be able to demand any information and assistance they require from the intelligence services. Where national security information is concerned, the agency as a whole will provide that assistance to the inquiry or investigation by complying with a compliance direction, rather than individuals directly in their own right.

To balance that, and to ensure that there are no gaps, carve-outs or exclusions, those in charge of the agencies are subject to specific requirements to put arrangements in place for individuals to maintain records of information relating to any acts that may be relevant to an inquiry or investigation, and to provide information to the authority to ensure that the duty is complied with as set out in clause 6. Rightly, a failure to have these arrangements in place will result in criminal sanctions.

Intelligence services obtain and retain sensitive security and intelligence information in order to protect the public from national security threats. Vital public interests, including national security, would be at real risk of harm from the unrestricted disclosure of this sensitive information. We all share the same aims here—ensuring that candour is in place while protecting national security and the public.

Taking on board the points raised by Hillsborough Law Now and others, we constructed clause 6 in such a way as to ensure that there is a secure process that the intelligence services can work through so that any information required by an inquiry or investigation reaches that place safely, so that there can be full candour. However, we have heard the concerns from Hillsborough Law Now and from members of this Committee about our provisions. I assure hon. Members that the Government have taken their points on board, and we will commit to working with them and others actively to consider steps to address this in time for Report.

I turn to the other amendments, which set out that the intelligence authorities are to be listed as a public authority for the purposes of the duty of candour and assistance, and the code of ethical conduct in schedule 2. Clause 6 already makes it clear that the duty applies to the intelligence services as it applies to all other public authorities; therefore, it is beyond doubt that they are included, as a public authority, in the Bill.

We have not set out an exhaustive list of public authorities in schedule 2 to avoid unintentionally excluding some bodies by failing to list them. No individual Department or arm’s length body of central Government is included in the list for that purpose. If we begin to list public bodies, there is a risk that we imply that those not listed are not covered, which could weaken the Bill. I urge the hon. Member for Cheadle to withdraw his amendment, but I reiterate my commitment to working with Members on a way forward to capture all the concerns raised both in the Committee and outside of it.

[Mr Morrison]

I thank the shadow Minister for the points that he made; he is spot on that the lack of clarity in the Bill, particularly surrounding what came out of the evidence sessions, raises more questions than answers. However, I am pleased that the Minister has said that the Government are happy to work with us on tightening those gaps before Report. This is not about unrestricted evidence; it is about getting to the truth, which must be our focus throughout. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Dr Mullan]

I beg to move amendment 3, in schedule 1, page 26, line 30, at end insert—

“(1A) Inquiries under subsection (1) include those designated by the Secretary of State as local inquiries into grooming gangs.”

This amendment would apply the Duty of Candour to the five local grooming gangs’ inquiries announced by the Government and any further ones established.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 1, in schedule 1, page 29, line 9, after “an inquiry” insert

“, independent panel or review established by a Minister”.

This amendment ensures that the statutory duty of candour and assistance extends automatically to independent panels and reviews established by Ministers of the Crown.

[Dr Mullan]

I rise to speak to amendment 3, and I also welcome the intention behind amendment 1. Amendment 3 relates to the scope of the duty of candour as it applies to non-statutory inquiries. Members will know that the Bill does not just impose a duty of candour on public bodies in major statutory inquiries that are set up under the Inquiries Act 2005; it allows Ministers to apply that same duty to non-statutory inquiries—or inquiries that, for various sensible reasons, may not require the full statutory machinery but none the less investigate matters of profound public concern.

Paragraph 2 of schedule 1 sets out the conditions under which a non-statutory inquiry may fall within the Bill: it must be initiated by a Minister; it must be intended to produce a published report; and the Minister must certify that the events in question have caused, or are capable of causing, public concern. That is a broadly drawn but important framework. However, there is a real risk that some of the most sensitive, complex and deeply distressing inquiries currently being established will fall entirely outside this regime.

I refer specifically to the local grooming gangs inquiries announced by the Government. These inquiries were promised to victims, survivors and affected communities as part of the commitment to shine a light on failures by public agencies over many decades to protect vulnerable children. They will be examining events that could not be more clearly connected to public concern and public confidence. Unless they are expressly captured by the Bill, however, the public bodies involved will not necessarily be subject to the statutory duty of candour that the Bill intends to deliver; it will be left to the whims of the Government of the day. Given the chequered history of this Administration, that is not a position that we would want to be left in, and it is not a position that many victims would want to be left in.

The amendment is therefore designed to remove any doubt by making it clear that the non-statutory inquiries designated by the Secretary of State as local grooming gang inquiries fall squarely within paragraph 2. It is a simply, clarifying amendment that protects victims, the integrity of the process and the public from the possibility of these inquiries falling into a grey area.

It is worth reminding the Committee why this matters. Across multiple towns and cities, victims were failed because agencies did not share information, confront uncomfortable truths and, in some cases, tell the public the full story. A duty of candour is not a mere formality in this context; it is an essential means by which we ensure that the same patterns of silence, defensiveness and institutional self-protection do not re-emerge.

If the Bill’s purpose is to raise standards in public life, to restore trust and to ensure openness in the face of institutional wrongdoing, surely these inquires—the very ones where a failure of candour has had the most devastating impacts—must be included explicitly. The Government may well argue that the wording already allows these inquiries to be covered. If that is the case, there is no harm in making it clear. If it is not the case, there is every reason for us to fix that today.

This amendment is not partisan. We heard from Mayor Burnham about his direct experience of a local grooming gang inquiry that lacked a duty of candour, and how he felt the inquiry would have benefited enormously from one. He supported our amendment to ensure that all other local inquiries would be subject to such a duty once the Bill became law.

The timing may not be perfect, but given the speed with which the Government seek to proceed with the Bill, and the positive impact it could have even now if public officials knew that this was incoming, I cannot see any reason why the Government would oppose the measure. It is straightforward and would ensure that when victims and survivors are told that lessons will be learned, we will do everything possible to guarantee that that is done honestly, fully and transparently by ensuring that inquiries have all the information they need.

Amendment 1—I believe this was touched on earlier, in relation to panels and what will fully constitute inclusion in the Bill—is helpful to ensure that when a Minister commissions one of these important panels, it is not simply left to them to decide whether it suits them to include the duty of candour. I therefore welcome that amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I am happy to confirm that they will be. They are not currently, but the Government are tabling an amendment to cover that point, and we will come to it later in Committee. Should that amendment be made, the Bill will cover those local authority investigations.

The Cabinet Office is undertaking further work to look at how we reform inquiries. As part of that, we will consider how the different types of inquiries, reviews and investigations could be more clearly defined, and when and how they could best be used. That will inform how the duty is used.

The duty of candour and assistance is a powerful tool to ensure co-operation with investigations, but it would not be useful in all circumstances. Most reviews focus on matters of policy or technical issues— for example, the curriculum and assessment review, the net zero review and the review of the future of women’s football. In those cases, applying the duty would be unnecessary and might risk making reviews more difficult to establish and slower to report. Where the duty is applied, it must be properly monitored and enforced, and therefore frameworks for compliance and the protection of information need to be in place. We must avoid unintentionally impeding or delaying certain types of investigations by introducing unnecessary and unhelpful processes and bureaucracy. We therefore think the Bill strikes the right balance in which investigations it applies to, with the power in the Bill providing us with the tools and flexibility we need to extend the duty where it could be useful.

I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden about how we move forward with her campaign. She has been an incredible and ferocious campaigner for the Primodos families for many years. I have met her and the Primodos families, and I am committed to working with her on a way forward to ensure that the duty of candour can assist.

Amendment 3 is designed to apply the duty of candour and assistance to inquiries that the Secretary of State has designated as local inquiries into grooming gangs. I thank the shadow Minister for raising this important issue. As he will be aware, we are moving at pace to establish a national inquiry into grooming gangs under the Inquiries Act 2005. It will be overseen by an independent commission with statutory powers to compel evidence and testimony so that institutions can be held to account for current and historic failures. The inquiry will be independent of Government and designed to command the confidence of victims and survivors and the wider public.

The Bill already applies the duty to statutory and non-statutory inquiries called by Ministers, including this new inquiry. To strengthen the Bill, we have also tabled an amendment extending the duty to inquiries called by local authorities, and we will debate that shortly. That amendment, combined with the existing provisions in the Bill, will enable the duty to apply to either local or national inquiries into grooming gangs. I therefore urge the shadow Minister to withdraw his amendment.

[Dr Mullan]

On amendment 1, I accept the Government’s intention to clarify further how these things will operate. On panels and non-statutory inquiries, although there is sometimes in Government a resistance to public inquiries for the wrong reasons, sometimes it is because they are expensive and time-consuming. The real opportunity for applying the duty of candour more widely is that if we can ensure that non-public inquiries get all the information they need, they are much more likely to be successful, thereby avoiding a future public inquiry with all the associated costs that lawyers make a huge amount of money from.

On amendment 3, although the Minister outlined the future public inquiry, the local inquiries have not been cancelled. There is clearly a view that they must also proceed. I cannot see any reason why we would not want them to proceed on the basis that they are subject to the duty of candour.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I am happy to reassure the shadow Minister that, should the Bill receive Royal Assent, its provisions will apply immediately to ongoing investigations and inquiries. That includes local inquiries, if we pass the amendment that the Government have tabled. We cannot allow that currently, because the Bill has not become law, but once it has done, it will cover existing ongoing inquiries and investigations and those that are yet to commence.

[Dr Mullan]

On that basis, the Minister should not have any objection to the amendment, because it would confirm that position more explicitly. We will therefore push it to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tessa Munt]

I am delighted to have got to this bit. I speak to this clause in particular, because I am extremely concerned that the duty of candour should capture subcontractors and the contractors to subcontractors. It is unbelievably common for those committed to carrying out contracts with local authorities, Government or public bodies generally to subcontract and subcontract and subcontract. There is absolutely no reason why those organisations and the people involved should not fall under the duty—those people are often the whistleblowers who tell the primary organisation, or their own, what it is that they have seen. I feel strongly that we should ensure that any person involved in providing a service to a service provider, where there is subcontracting in place, should comply with the duty of candour and assistance to an inquiry, investigation or all the other panels and various things that we have referred to this morning.

The duty should apply not only to the primary service provider, but to the subcontractors, whether individuals or organisations. That would close a potential accountability gap by making it clear that all parties involved in providing a service must co-operate fully with inquiries, investigations and panels. It would help to ensure that relevant information is not withheld purely due to contractual arrangement. That would support comprehensive scrutiny of decisions, actions, omissions and service delivery.

[Dr Mullan]

I rise briefly to support the amendment and the points made by the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills. It is about not just existing contractual arrangements, but how there might be perverse incentives for people to create different structures if they think that, through contracting or subcontracting, they will escape the accountability under the Bill. I am keen to hear from the Minister.

Probably the example that everyone has in mind is the Post Office scandal. That was a direct contractor, but it could have had subcontractors and so on. When the Post Office was conducting its private investigations, it might have used subcontractors to do some of those investigations. That would not be an unusual step for an organisation to take, so it is important that we get clarity on this issue.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank hon. Members for their contributions. The amendment would apply the duty of candour to subcontractors as well as contractors of a public authority, as has been outlined. In the Bill, we have sought to extend the duty into the private sector in a manner that is proportionate and effective. The focus is, and must be, public authorities and public officials—those whose role is to serve the public. That has to be the starting point. The Bill then extends the obligations of the duty of candour and assistance to private bodies and individuals that either had a statutory health and safety obligation in connection with the incident under investigation or were a contractor to a public authority and, in that capacity, had a significant impact on members of the public in connection with the incident. As we have heard, these provisions are designed to capture the equivalents of Fujitsu in the Post Office inquiry.

[Dr Mullan]

Another example of what we have been discussing this morning is Primodos and drug companies. Does the Minister expect drug companies to be captured as well?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I welcome that intervention. As I have stated, if there was a statutory health and safety obligation in connection with an incident under investigation, then, yes, those individuals would be captured by the Bill.

[Dr Mullan]

Does the provision of treatment to an individual constitute an incident? That is what we have been talking about in relation to Primodos.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

If there had been an investigation or inquiry into that then, yes, it would.

Subcontractors are one or more stages removed. They are responsible to the main or another contractor. Where relevant, we would expect a main contractor to account for the performance and actions of a subcontractor and be candid in doing so. Statutory inquiries and inquests already have the ability to compel evidence from such persons if necessary. Therefore, on balance, we do not think it necessary or proportionate to extend the duty to all subcontractors. I therefore urge the hon. Member to withdraw the amendment.