Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Lord Bichard Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, it is with a heavy heart that I warmly support the Bill, because when I first became a public servant, now nearly 60 years ago, I would never have anticipated that, decades later, we would need to legislate to require public officials to behave with integrity and tell the truth—but we do. That is a cause for us all to reflect on the state of our public services, for which we in this House all have some responsibility. I think I am the only former Permanent Secretary speaking today, and I feel that responsibility very deeply.

Like others, I want to congratulate those who have fought to uncover the truth and then to win support for a Bill that I hope will make the deceit, obfuscation and dishonesty that they encountered less likely in the future. I so admire what they have achieved but their fight should never have been necessary, any more than it should have been necessary for victims of the infected blood scandal. We cannot allow this to go on staining our public services in the way that it is, so this is a hugely important Bill and a hugely important moment.

Inevitably, a lot of attention has been focused on the proposed new duty on public authorities and officials to act with candour at inquiries and investigations. Equally important is the part of the Bill that imposes a new duty on them to take steps to maintain ethical conduct “at all times”. I want to say a little about that, because the real test of the Bill’s success will be whether it helps to stamp out the kind of behaviour that led to Hillsborough, infected blood and all the other tragedies that we have spoken about today. Ultimately, the Bill will be judged by whether we have fewer inquiries and the extent to which it begins to rebuild trust in our public services. Let us not forget how badly that trust has been lost.

While I wholeheartedly support Part 2, Chapter 2, in its current form it is a little open-ended, particularly with regard to the codes of conduct that all authorities will now need to publish. I want to make a few points about those codes. The first point is that we need to remember that all the failures we have talked about today occurred in spite of the existence of several well-intentioned and much-lauded codes: the Civil Service Code, the Ministerial Code and the Nolan principles. They all existed when these tragedies occurred. We need to learn that codes themselves are not a guarantee for improved behaviour, even with the welcome new accountability that the Bill introduces. Frankly, if all we are going to do is restate the Nolan principles, we will have no effect on the way in which public authorities work.

The second point is that the codes must make absolutely clear that the ultimate responsibility of public officials is not to the brand and reputation of their department, not to their senior managers and not even to Ministers. It is to citizens: the ordinary folk who suffered so badly in all these cases. That is not clear enough in the existing codes. If you want to see the consequences of that, have a closer look at the Infected Blood Inquiry. I fervently believe that the attempt to protect the brand reputation of the department led to vast numbers of people dying.

The third point is that achieving improved standards will require a change of culture, as others have said. Above all, that will demand consistent, determined and visible leadership from the top. I want to use an example that we might reflect on. I very much welcome the way in which the new Cabinet Secretary—the head of the Civil Service and, in effect, the head of our public services—has chosen to publish her objectives. That is a fantastic step forward, but I have to note that they do not include a responsibility to promote and protect the highest standards of ethical conduct. I think they should. There is a danger that we will pass the Bill and things will carry on much as they are, which, frankly, is with complacency about ethical standards.

My last point is that if there are to be ethical codes, and if they are to be enforced, they need to be clear and accessible. The Bill does not preclude that, of course, but the fact that individual authorities will be able to publish their own version of a code could confuse rather than empower the public. That means that the guidance from the “appropriate national authority”—a strange term to use; I presume it means the Government—needs to be absolutely clear and in the form of a very strong common core template that public authorities will have to implement.

At the end of the day, if people lose trust in the integrity of public authorities and public officials, it represents a real threat to our constitutional democracy. That is why this Bill is so important, but it must be seen as the start, not the end, of rebuilding trust.