Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Maria Eagle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Maria Eagle (Liverpool Garston) (Lab)]

rose—

[The Prime Minister]

I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention, then I will come to my right hon. Friend.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady anticipates my next point, which I will make before taking an intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle). We have to recognise that in some scandals, such as the Post Office Horizon scandal, the boundaries between the public sector and the private sector are complicated. In answer to the hon. Lady’s question, clause 4 of this Bill applies the duty to some private bodies, particularly those delivering public functions and those with relevant health and safety responsibilities, as well as relevant public sector contractors—in the Post Office case, Fujitsu—for that very reason. We have to recognise that the boundaries are blurred, and we need to make sure that the duty extends appropriately.

[Maria Eagle]

The Prime Minister knows that, for over two decades, the legal system failed to provide truth and justice to the Hillsborough families, and it was only a non-legal process—the Hillsborough independent panel—that finally set things right on the road to truth, justice and accountability. Does he see any prospect, therefore, that we will include in the legislation at a later stage provision to ensure that a Hillsborough independent panel-type process can be offered to families involved in future disasters, to try to circumvent the long-standing failure of the criminal justice system to offer truth and accountability to families quickly?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her work and campaigning on this issue over many years. She makes a powerful point about the independent panel. I first met Bishop James Jones 15-plus years ago now, and I genuinely think he was among the first to listen properly—knowing what listening means—to those who were giving evidence to his panel, which is why the report that he made was so well received and respected. We will certainly give consideration to whether panels like that can serve a useful purpose in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Eagle (Liverpool Garston) (Lab)]

This is the first time that any Government have brought forward legislation to tackle what went wrong at Hillsborough. It is a fulfilment of a Labour manifesto commitment and a commitment by my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister, and I congratulate him on it.

I rise to support the legislation. The duty of candour with effective sanctions and equality of arms are all good, and will make a difference. However, I think that the Bill should also seek to boost the powers and capabilities of the office of the new Independent Public Advocate, and I want to explain why.

I was first elected to this House in May 1997, and I have been making speeches about the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath ever since. The disaster happened a full eight years before I was elected more than 28 years ago. As a trainee lawyer in Liverpool, I got to know some of the bereaved families only a year after the disaster, in 1990, as they sought to recover damages for nervous shock, which was a way of reaching a legal finding of culpability against the police. The bereaved families did not want to make money; they wanted the police to accept the blame that they should have accepted. This was one of a number of legal actions ongoing at the time. I worked on some of those cases at the direction of my principal, who was on the steering committee of solicitors conducting that civil litigation, and while I did not have conduct, I was familiar with matters and met some of the families at the time.

Some of the bereaved families became constituents of mine when I was elected in 1997. Indeed, some of the very first meetings I had with constituents after my election were with members of the executive of the Hillsborough Family Support Group—Trevor and Jenni Hicks, Hilda and Phil Hammond, and Doreen Jones, who between them lost five family members at Hillsborough. Four of them were my constituents, and three of them still are all these years later.

I think that my long and close involvement with some of the families gives me some insight into what went wrong, and I have some observations. My first observation about the disaster, as I have alluded to already, is that the legal system—the entire justice system—showed itself to be totally unable to deal properly with the aftermath or even to fulfil its basic functions in the face of a national disaster. This disaster unfolded live on TV at a very high-profile national event; we all saw what happened. There was a large appetite in society to get to the bottom of what had happened.

Within four months of the disaster occurring, the interim report of the public inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor had correctly identified the loss of police control as the main cause of the disaster, excoriating South Yorkshire police for its attempt to evade responsibility for what occurred by trying to blame Liverpool fans and telling the force to modify its behaviour. That is where truth and accountability could have been established. But South Yorkshire police simply ignored the findings of the public inquiry and used all subsequent legal proceedings—all paid for with public money, with expensive lawyers doing the job—and most notably the first inquest, to redouble its efforts to evade responsibility.

Eight years of legal action had failed to get to the truth by the time I was elected in 1997. There was no justice for those involved, and particularly for those who, as we now know, were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough. There was not a sniff of accountability for those whose gross failings had led to the disaster or those whose subsequent behaviour in blaming the victims and survivors led to so much anguish over so many years for so many families and survivors. That is despite the fact that every possible kind of legal action had been undertaken in that time—none of them worked. Once the justice system gets it wrong, and appeals and judicial reviews do not succeed, it is almost impossible to get it right subsequently using the same system.

It seemed like the truth did not matter to the justice system. The system was content to settle on a lie, with inquest verdicts of accidental death and no criminal or disciplinary proceedings for those at fault. It was content to allow the perpetrators to peddle the appalling falsehood that the disaster was caused by Liverpool fans being drunk, late and ticketless. This was a South Yorkshire police cover story, and what they aimed at establishing as the truth through the systematic changing of police statements. That effort failed spectacularly at the public inquiry and was repudiated within four months of the disaster, but the justice system allowed the perpetuation of this mendacious false narrative by those who had been identified as at fault: senior South Yorkshire police officers.

The first inquests allowed ongoing reports in the newspapers for over a year about the inquest proceedings, firmly to establish in the public mind that the false narrative was true. It was as if the public inquiry and its findings had never happened. Those who had caused the disaster were retired early on enhanced pensions. Society got the impression that the disaster was about football hooliganism, and the unlawful killings were said to be just “an accident”—despite the findings of Lord Justice Taylor in the public inquiry.

That is where the justice system, and the lawyers and judges, got us to. The way I see it, the justice system might properly be said to have failed in all respects and at every turn in this most appalling miscarriage of justice imaginable. The legal system failed. Multiple lawyers, judges and causes of action failed: failed to get to the truth, failed to do so in a timely fashion and failed to make those responsible accountable. The system failed the bereaved families, it failed the survivors and it failed those who died.

To the extent that this Bill suggests that more lawyers and an equality of arms before the law is enough to guarantee truth and justice, I say it is not enough. That, to me, is one of the main lessons of Hillsborough, and I say that as a lawyer, because I am indeed a lawyer. It is a good thing that an equality of arms is to be set up in legal proceedings, and it is a good thing that families can get the help that they need. I support that, but it does not guarantee truth, justice or accountability.

I have met many families bereaved by public disasters—not just those affected at Hillsborough but the MV Derbyshire families, the Alder Hey organs scandal families, Manchester arena bombing families—and they all want pretty much the same thing. They want the truth, and they want it as quickly as possible. They want accountability for those at fault, not official cover-ups. They do not want any other families to go through what they have endured; they all say that—they want lessons learned and what went wrong put right for the future. That is simple. It is not too much to ask. Those are the three tests by which I judge the adequacy of legislation that sets out to learn the lessons of Hillsborough, including this Bill.

I was a sponsor of the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, introduced in 2017 by Andy Burnham, which was the precursor to this legislation. I can see nothing wrong at all with having a duty of candour in statute. It helps get across to public officials subject to it the importance of telling the truth to inquiries and investigations and that their functions should be carried out with candour, transparency and frankness. I would have hoped that they would all have known this anyway, but apparently some of them need to be reminded.

I note that this legislation takes up more rather more pages establishing a duty than the original 2017 Bill, but I have no doubt that these changes and their import will be fully scrutinised in Committee and we can understand the intention fully. I know that there will be significant interest in the legislation, not only in this House but in the other place.

Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report—“The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”, which is about the lessons learned from Hillsborough—recommended, along with his 24 additional points of learning, enacting Andy Burnham’s Public Authority (Accountability) Bill. However, lying liars are going to lie, and although I am not convinced that, had this legislation been in place at the time of Hillsborough, the cover-up would not have been attempted, I am gratified to see—this is certainly the case—that there would have been more opportunities to punish those caught lying when they were caught. The more serious punishments in the Bill for breaching a duty of candour are a good thing, but would this have stopped the cover-up or the long years of agony endured by families and survivors? We have to take this opportunity—it will be the only one—to enact legislation that has a chance of achieving this.

I have spent the last few years trying to tackle the way in which we deal with the aftermath of disasters from a slightly different angle. Since 2016, I have been introducing to the House an independent public advocate Bill, which I have worked on with Lord Wills in the other place. He has been introducing it there since 2014. It was drafted after work we did with some Hillsborough families and those affected by other disasters. It arises out of the following insight. The legal system has failed repeatedly in the aftermath of disasters, but the Hillsborough independent panel succeeded spectacularly. It was established in 2009 by the Labour Government of Gordon Brown after the 20th anniversary of Hillsborough, and it reported in 2012, under the Conservative Government, who allowed it to complete its work despite the era of austerity, thanks in large part to Theresa May.

Finally, the truth that the South Yorkshire police had tried to cover up for all those years was established in the public consciousness. The fans were not at fault. The police caused the disaster. Many of those who died could have been saved had they received timely medical assistance. The police engaged in an appalling cover-up, and set out to deflect blame from themselves on to fans, including by attempting a wholesale revision of police witness statements to better reflect the cover-up story, and to erase any statements that seemed to point the blame at senior officers. They also took blood alcohol readings, even from the children who died—the youngest was 10, let us remember—to try to smear them as somehow being at fault.

There were shocking revelations in the report, and it led to an immediate re-appraisal of the public view of what had occurred. It led to an apology to the families by David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the day, and a striking down of the accidental death inquest verdicts, which were eventually substituted with unlawful killing verdicts—but not before South Yorkshire police had again tried to tell its cover-up story, over an agonising two-year legal process, in the second inquests. This was a terrible ordeal for families, and it only concluded in 2016.

The Hillsborough independent panel was not a legal proceeding. It was about the transparent release of documents, freedom of information, and a narrative account arising out of the study of the documents. Lawyers were not involved. The Bill that I keep introducing to the House would enable a public advocate to assist families in getting to the truth much sooner, in the event of a disaster, because it would replicate that same process at a much earlier stage in the disaster’s aftermath. I believe that would promote the telling of truth at a much earlier stage. Shining the light of transparency on the activity of public officials in the aftermath of a disaster will torpedo cover-ups before they can get very far—and at a significantly lower cost to the public purse and faster than our justice system has shown itself able to.

The Hillsborough independent panel did in two years what the justice system had failed to do in 24 years. This kind of proceeding has the potential to enable families to side-step the years of overlapping legal actions that they get caught up in after public disasters. I think it would be a useful addition to the armoury for families who want the truth and accountability quickly, and who want lessons to be learned. Families bereaved by public disasters should have the option of asking for such a process at a much earlier stage in the aftermath, and that should be up to them.

A version of the Independent Public Advocate was brought in by the previous Government towards the end of their time in office, and an appointment to the office has been made by the current Government. However, I do not believe that she has sufficient powers or resource to do the job that my Bill envisaged being done. I may well try to explore in Committee, where it is in order, what can be done about that. I believe that provision for an independent public advocate would increase the range of options for bereaved families in the aftermath of public disasters like Hillsborough. It would mean that families had a greater choice of how to take forward their efforts. It would be a good addition.

The truth, quickly; accountability, not cover-up; justice for those affected; and lessons learned and swiftly, and implemented so that nobody else has to suffer the same way—that is what families want, and this Bill must be judged on how well it promotes those aims. I think it will do so very well.

[Several hon. Members rose—]