Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting)

Tom Morrison Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Ian Byrne]

With the strengthening amendments.

Pete Weatherby: Yes. There is no silver bullet or absolute answer, because if people choose to lie, they choose to lie. What we are doing here is putting in so many deterrents—we are not interested in locking people up; we are interested in deterring them in the first place. The answer to the second question, building on the answer I gave Maria Eagle, is that the Bill goes a long way to solving the problem, but the amendments would make it much better.

On the question of international partners, let me deal with it this way. If the head of the French secret service were sitting in Paris, reading the BBC reports of the Daniel De Simone case, in which it is clear from the High Court that the security services misled two different constitutions of the High Court and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, or reading the account of what happened with the misleading of the Manchester Arena inquiry, would they think, “Well, it’s good that the British secret services are doing that,” or would they think, “Next time we have a dealing with them, can we believe what they say?” The more candid that we can make this, the better the relationship with international partners. There is no threat here; that is a completely false road to go down.

[Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)]

Q Thank you for your evidence so far, Pete. You touched just then on how this will be a deterrent, but for that to be needed, there needs to be a culture change in public services. In the Bill, there is a lot of talk about trying to create codes of conduct. How do you envisage that working? Do you think that one standard code of conduct would go across all public services, or should each organisation be responsible for building its own code of conduct and then implementing it?

Pete Weatherby: I think there should be a mixture. There have to be central tenets to it; otherwise, we will fall into the problem where a local authority or police force will have its lawyers lawyering up a code that does not do what it should do. I think there should be a mixture on that front.

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

Q I would just like a little more detail—thank you for your briefing—on the difficulty of proving intent and recklessness in a corporate body. For those of us who are not legally trained, could you explain a bit more about why that is difficult to prove?

Pete Weatherby: We have set the standard very high indeed, because we are not interested in criminalising people and we are certainly not interested in scaring people. One example thrown at us during the discussions with the Government was that we might be criminalising junior civil servants who turn up late for work—absolutely not. Intent and subjective recklessness are high hurdles, but they are individual hurdles. A corporate body cannot easily act recklessly. It is not a legal impossibility; you do have health and safety or companies law offences, where there are corporate offences and you prove the mens rea—mental state—through the directing minds, but that is an incredibly difficult complication, and it does not really work with the offences that we are looking at here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lizzi Collinge]

Q Thank you. That is very helpful. Mr Guest, you talked about some of the guardrails against unmeritorious or vexatious prosecutions. One of the things that we have seen in previous cover-ups is that junior members of staff have felt the burden, either when they try to tell the truth or because they are punished when the truth has not been there. I have been told—although I disagree—that the Bill could create a fear of unreasonable prosecution, or could cause junior members of staff to take responsibility, rather than senior members of staff. Do you consider that a risk? Does the way the law is set out mean that it will work as intended?

Tom Guest: When I mention that risk, it is to guard against the risk of unmeritorious prosecutions. Before there is a prosecution, there has to be an investigation. Again, you can have private investigations or police investigations. We at the CPS do not see a prospect of unmeritorious police investigations, and we do not see a present risk, although we see some risk, of unmeritorious private investigations. The DPP’s consent comes in at the point of asking, “Is this going to go into the court system or not?” At that point, we as the CPS are assessing whichever investigation has happened against the standard tests of, “Is there sufficient evidence to prosecute the suspect?” and, “Is a prosecution required in the public interest?” Whoever the suspect is, we will assess that against those standards.

[Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)]

Q This is for Tom Guest. The new offence of misleading the public would not apply for the purposes of journalism. How clear do you think the meaning of that exception is? I will give two examples: would it count if a Minister was writing a piece for a newspaper column or if a public servant was briefing the media after an event?

Tom Guest: It is fair to say that it is quite widely drawn, and there can be good policy reasons for that. Clearly, it is important to uphold the freedom of speech and protect the interests of journalism—not having a chilling effect on journalism is important. We understand why it is drafted in that way, but it is drafted quite widely. It would appear to cover those examples. Again, I am giving that at a very broad level. In a real-life scenario, the police would have gathered much more evidence for the prosecution to consider, but it potentially would cover those situations.

[Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)]

Q My question is to Tom. Under the clause 12(5) defence of reasonable excuse for a seriously improper act of misconduct, what do we regard as the “sufficient evidence” described in clause 12(6)? You said that the defendant simply needs to raise that, but to what standard? What is sufficient and, in a jury trial, who decides that? Is it for the jury to decide if the defence has been laid out, or will there be judge guidance to the jury? The standard of the burden of proof falling on the Crown to disprove it is pretty high—it is “beyond all reasonable doubt”. That is my concern.

Tom Guest: From a practical point of view, in prosecuting misconduct in public office we do not generally have a problem with that—although I will come on to situations in which we do—because you have already shown that a police officer is doing something very serious indeed. The chances of them establishing that they had a reasonable excuse for that are very slim indeed. For context, it is quite rare that that is successfully raised because the prosecution should already have shown that something pretty serious has happened.

To give an example, we did have cases where public officials were providing information in return for money. On one view, that was a form of corruption, but their defence was, “I have a reasonable excuse for that.” Let me just run through how that works. It could be raised in several formats—ideally, by them giving evidence, but there are other ways. They can try to introduce it in the course of the prosecution case. There is a judge filter—the judge will not allow any old reasonable excuse to be put to the jury—but if the judge is satisfied that it is right for it to go to the jury, ultimately it will be for the jury to assess. The juries did assess that in those examples where public officials were providing information in exchange for money.