Hillsborough Law and how it has developed in Parliament
- lssrbutt
- Dec 1
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 10
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill is not far from being sent for royal assent, here is some expert analysis on the bill and the details within it.
Duty of Candour
Lucy Easthope is a disaster recovery expert and author of When the Dust Settles. She spoke about the potential shortcomings of the Hillsborough law and how the recent discussions on Candour are encouraging and how it is is still going to be difficult enforce even with the new legislation.
She began speaking about how her experiences with civil service workers worries her for how they will cope with the new legislation.
‘Civil services are going to struggle with it much more than I think they realise because they think that they don't tell lies anymore but that is not my experience. The truth is hidden in other ways; are they going to make it hard to prove that they were not candid.’
‘How will it work if I as a responder, know people are lying on day four or five of an incident and that's my lived experience and even from the team drafting the Hillsborough law I still cannot get an answer, and they might say well that is protected by whistleblowing law but that is very difficult to do’
Lucy goes on to talk about how these issues are still occurring in cases like Grenfell and the Covid pandemic.
‘There is a real framing sometimes as the problems being historic, so people talk about it being an issue with Hillsborough which is 1989 and, in the process, afterwards but it is still a problem today.’
She goes on to say ‘because of things like the pandemic … and particularly the post office scandal people are actually the other way now. In the past people look at Hillsborough and go well I don’t like football so that won't be me but now they are thinking hang on you know I could run a small business and be completely shafted like Fujitsu and the government did. I could be in the pandemic and think I'm not sure of whether the government is capable of looking after me.’
She describes the period after a disaster has taken place as a ‘Churchillian war spirit.’
‘Immediately after the incident there is an eight-week honeymoon period and that is an incredibly difficult time to raise concerns, so it is very much not considered the right thing to do to raise questions about the response but often unless you can raise it then the truth is bolted out of the door.’
Easthope went on to say that if it were mandated for questions about planning and response to be asked early it would be harder to hide the truth.
Lucy has depicted the attitudes of society after a disaster in this graph.
By Rebecca Burgess
Who is fighting for the bill and why?
Barrister and human rights lawyer Patrick Roche was one of the leading councils for 77 families in the Hillsborough inquest.
He said: “I have worked with the families on what we could do for a legacy, to try and make sure that these sorts of things wouldn't happen again and a deterrent for people who tried to cover up and lie about victims.”
Mr Roche explained that whilst there is no “silver bullet” when bringing justice to tragedies such as Hillsborough, it is important that something must be done to change the culture of the criminal justice system in the UK.
He said: “The cover up was appalling and not only meant the families didn't get justice for over 20 years, but the survivors and the families of those who died needed to fight on to be vindicated and fought brilliantly, but it's wrecked a whole lot of lives. That was why we all wanted Hillsborough law.
“There’s going to be security services and other people who aren’t going to be happy with it which we regard as proof that it is going to be effective, and that it's scaring the people who would be affected.”
The inquest, which lasted over two years, has been not only the longest inquest, but also the longest jury case in legal history.
Mr Roche explains: “We knew that there was no guarantee the criminal trials would work out as we hoped. But the fact that nobody was convicted of anything, no single policeman prosecuted or even disciplined, was a huge let down.”
“One of the main things that victims or families wanted was a sense that the death wasn't in vain, and that some good would have come, but there ought to be some change, so people didn't have to suffer again.”
Mr Roche explained that there are still things that could be improved to the bill and that people may feel the bill has been “watered down”.
He said: “At the moment if the duty of candour is broken, the only comeback is against the organisation, not against any individual which isn’t good enough.
If your chief executive or chief constable of an organisation has broken the law, if there’s no penalty for you or anybody else then the deterrent is much less.”
The fight continues for families and campaigners such as the Hillsborough Law Now committee, who are continuing to campaign for the bill and what can be improved.
Mr Roche explained: “There's a wrangle going on all year behind the scenes.
The families and the lawyers who were arguing on their behalf had to stand very firm, or the bill would not be in as good a form as it is now.”
By Rachael Buttery
How effective are the changes to the Public Office (Accountability) offences going to be?
Sebastian Del Monte, Civil Liberties Lawyer (Hodge Jones & Allen) said: “My understanding is that they have just changed the offence, so they've rephrased misconduct in public office. They’ve tried to make it very much a simpler offence to prove.
So, there's two different changes to offences that are in the bill, misleading the public and then there’s misconduct in public office, which was already an offence, but it was a common law offence which has now been developed into case law.”
Hodge Jones & Allen have previously and continue to work with some of the families of those affected directly by what happened at Hillsborough Stadium.
“My understanding is that the difficulty with the old offence was that you needed to effectively prove an element of bad faith or dishonesty, and they knew that what they were doing was more than their powers.
The new offence only requires that they did something for their benefit or someone else’s detriment, the element of dishonesty is still relevant but it's kind of interpreted more broadly in the offence”.
Critics of the bill have said that it has been “watered down” despite the law finally being passed through Parliament 36 years after the tragedy.
“It's (the bill) probably a bit of a let-down. There's still some good things in the bill, the bills made it easier for families to get funding for inquests for example.
Obviously, the signalling is good.
It's important that public authorities are transparent, but I do think it has been quite diluted
The initial thinking of the duty of candour would be that it applies to all litigation that was the initial proposal and that's just effectively now been narrowed to inquests and inquiries where they already were under various duties to be transparent.
I'm not sure what it is going to achieve, it may change the culture slowly”
The law will hope to prevent major public cover-ups like with Grenfell fire or any other public office scandals.
But in the case of Hillsborough where the cover up is so significant, it's not going to be and it's from a police force so effectively the people who are meant to be pursuing people for criminal offences, the deterrent effect of a criminal offence is not going to change cultural corruption or systematic corruption, so I'm not convinced it's going to do a huge amount.” He added.
By Arley Armfield
Conclusion
Despite the bill being arguably watered down, it has been a long-time coming for many families who have endured suffering from large cover-ups during COVID, Hillsborough or Grenfell.
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