Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting)

Anneliese Midgley Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Lizzi Collinge]

Q So there is no easy way to show corporate collective actions, which are obviously the sum of a number of individual actions.

Pete Weatherby: The Bill creates some individual duties, so you can prove them against the individual, but on the corporate duty, the simple way of dealing with it is the one that we put forward. It is really simple: it is a couple of lines, as you can see from the amendments we have put forward. You make the head of the organisation responsible for the discharge of the corporate duty. There is no problem with that.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Q Thank you very much, Pete, for coming to give evidence. Going back to the stuff that has been raised about the intelligence services, will you state plainly whether you think clause 6 strikes the right balance between candour and national security, and what is the problem that the Hillsborough Law Now briefing raises with regard to schedule 1?

Pete Weatherby: We have had very detailed discussions with the Government about this over the last year, and clause 6 was the culmination of those. The clause baldly states that the provisions apply to the intelligence services, but with a caveat. That caveat in clause 6 is fine. The Government came up with a slight issue, which was that intelligence officers might inadvertently, without realising it, notify things that affect national security. The caveat in clause 6 deals with that, and that is fine. What it does not deal with is the clause 2(4) duty to provide the evidence subject to the notification. I am sorry if this is a bit legalistic, but there is a clear difference there.

What would happen is that the intelligence service would notify the inquiry or investigation of the fact that it had relevant information or evidence to give, but then the individuals within the intelligence service would be required to provide the material. Because the intelligence service is sighted on that, the material from the individual intelligence officers goes through the intelligence services before it goes to the investigation, so the national security aspect is dealt with—no problem.

We thought that was what the Government had agreed to, but when we look at a rather obscure part of schedule 1, clause 2(4) still applies, except that you cannot make it apply, because it stops the issuing of a compliance notice, which is what kick-starts the application of clause 2(4). So that device disapplies it, and that is the problem. If you just changed the schedule 1 thing, clause 6 would be fine. That is what we thought we had agreed to, to deal with the legitimate national security aspect.

It is important that the individual responsibilities apply to intelligence officers as well, subject to the national security checks. We do not think that is a problem at all. We challenged the intelligence services to tell us how it is a problem, and they have not. If they do not apply, you end up in the Manchester Arena situation, where the evidence was corporate and was wrong. It was not until the chair, who was extremely good, called the intelligence officers themselves—on oath, in closed proceedings—that the false narrative that had been put forward corporately was unpicked.

I am sorry if that is a bit complicated, but that is the problem. It is easily solved, and there would be no effect on national security. It would make our intelligence services better, in the same way as the rest of the Bill makes local authorities, police forces and everybody else better.

[The Chair]

I have to draw this session to a conclusion. Mr Weatherby, thank you very much for you evidence; the Committee is indebted to you.

Examination of Witnesses

Professor Penney Lewis and Tom Guest gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tessa Munt]

Q Can I just say how sorry I feel for you? It sounds dreadful and I am sorry. The question I should ask you is, “How confident are you that this will change the culture in public authorities?”, but I sense from what I have heard that I ought to ask, do you have any confidence that the Bill will change things?

Charlotte Hennessy: We are very confident. We have literally given 10 years of our lives, fighting to be here in this place. We have to acknowledge that Keir Starmer is the only Prime Minister who has endorsed the Bill. I would like to remind everyone that our Prime Minister made me a promise. He made a pledge to the public. It is now your duty to ensure that you fulfil that promise as well. If we were not confident in the Bill, we would not be sitting here today.

Steve Kelly: Just touching on something that Seamus was talking about before, about changing cultures within authorities and so on, I would like to give you an example that has never left me. During the Hillsborough inquests, a man in his 40s or early 50s was giving evidence. He was an ex-PC—at the time of Hillsborough, he was probably a young PC. He was being questioned about the culture within the South Yorkshire police force at the time in 1989.

I will never forget that man saying, “When you used to go Snig Hill, and you’d be walking along the corridor, you’d hold your head down when you’d see the bosses. You daren’t look at them, because we were frightened of them.” How could we encourage young officers like that to become whistleblowers? You couldn’t. We need a culture change. I thought that was a great point that this is something this law might do for not only policemen, but any public servants—anyone deserves support if they are trying to right a wrong.

That young policeman must have taken that with him to those inquests. I remember looking at his face and thinking, “That’s the first time you’ve got that out.” The burden was on him all those years as well. It should not be like that. Hopefully, the Hillsborough law will support that.

Sue Roberts: You are right; the culture changes have to be led from the very top—from the CEOs of these companies. Either they have to want to make this change happen or they need to move on.

[Anneliese Midgley]

Q I have two questions for the whole panel. To start with, thank you so much for everything that you have done. There is no doubt about it; we would not be here in this room today with the Bill where it is without your work. We heard in an earlier evidence session from Pete Weatherby KC, the director of Hillsborough Law Now, who talked about command responsibility. He said that without the amendment, a lot of the duties in the Bill are reduced to something that looks good, but is rather ineffective. He also talked about application to the intelligence services. Do you agree with what Pete Weatherby said to us today? Owing to the shortness of time, I will ask my second question as well: what do you think the Bill Committee needs to hear from you today?

Charlotte Hennessy: We completely support what Pete said earlier and the amendments that he has suggested. We are in full agreement with all the information that has been included in the Bill. Going forward, we need to acknowledge that Hillsborough is our story, but there are many, many others. We also need to acknowledge that the Hillsborough Law Now campaign group is made up of so many other examples of miscarriages of justice. They will have submitted their own evidence to you, so I will not name them all today, but we need to ensure that there is change going forward. We cannot keep allowing the same situations to repeat.

Not to be disrespectful, but ultimately we also need to acknowledge that the current laws that are in place failed to secure prosecutions against those that were responsible. David Duckenfield told that one lie while he stood over people who were scrambling for their lives. He got away with that because the Crown Prosecution failed to secure a criminal case against him. He was offered sympathy while family members had to sit and watch. He was allowed to place files so that he did not have to look at the family members that were sat in the public gallery.

We could sit and talk about examples all day. Norman Bettison was in this building. He briefed people about what happened at Hillsborough. He was allowed to do that. He was then made chief constable of Merseyside and then he was knighted. He was complicit in the cover-up. We have to change it. It has to stop.

Margaret Aspinall: I have to thank Maria Eagle—if you don’t mind, Maria. I always remember, a good few years ago, Maria having the power—the guts—to stand up in Parliament and say that it was “black propaganda” with Bettison. She was absolutely spot on.

When I look back over the years and think about what Charlotte was saying earlier, Mr Duckenfield—I call him Mr Duckenfield out of respect to all of you; otherwise I would not—walked away scot-free. He went missing for a couple of hours and not one person knew where he was. He could not remember where he had been; he could not remember where he was. He must have been the bloody Invisible Man because, good God, there’s no way. I think the police were scared to say exactly where he was. They were all scared; they were all covering up for each other. To me, that is an absolute, utter, utter disgrace of a system in this country.

I know we can’t bring judges up, but there is a few of them should be brought up. When we were at the private prosecution, where a judge could turn round and tell Mr Duckenfield, “Don’t worry, Mr Duckenfield, you won’t get a custodial sentence,” we knew then we had no chance—no chance. He directed the jury twice, because they came in and asked a question. For him to turn round and say, “What message are you sending out to the emergency services if you come back with guilty?”, what does that tell all of you? It tells you we had no chance whatsoever. We were up against a system that was corrupt from the very top to the bottom.

I feel sometimes we are on trial yet again for what happened at Hillsborough, because we are sitting here like this. I feel I am trying to ask all of you to do the right thing. I have asked the Prime Minister. He made that promise; he made a phone call to me that he would do the right thing. As Charlotte said, we thank him for that. He has made that promise; he will have to fulfil that promise. He has also promised it would not be watered down. For Hillsborough families—and for the likes of Ian as well, who was at that game and who knows what we have all gone through and what the survivors went through—we are here to change a system that should have been changed decades ago. When you look at all the cover-ups that have gone on—I can name them all, but I won’t, because I am sure you all know—it is a disgrace that we are sitting here now, 36 years on, trying to change the system. I am asking all of you, please don’t let anybody else go through what we have gone through. Please, I ask you all: do the right thing.

[The Chair]

Q Mrs Aspinall, I can assure you that, before this Committee, you are most certainly not on trial. Steve Kelly.

Steve Kelly: You asked us what the Hillsborough campaign wants from this. The Hillsborough campaign finished; Denton, Foster and Metcalf were found not guilty. I remember being there that day. Again, it came back that the case had been quashed. They walked away, after some of the most horrific things you could do as a policeman or a solicitor. I can remember, although I was surrounded by the campaigners and survivors who have supported us all these years, the feeling of loneliness, thinking, “What now?” We had been all these years fighting; looking for truth, which we never got—we got some truth; looking for justice, which we never got—we got justification; and looking for accountability—someone mentioned it before—and we have never had accountability.

I went home that day—I live alone—and I sat at home that night and sobbed. Why? I had done nothing wrong. I was just a lad from Liverpool; I’d done nothing. But those three men walked away with not a stain on their reputation, with their full pensions, and probably with a smile on their face—I had actually seen the smiles on their faces as they left the courts. You shouldn’t let anyone do that, to anyone. It is cruel. As I say, there was that feeling of loneliness and defeat. We had done nothing wrong. Why did I feel defeated? Because I couldn’t go to my mother’s grave and say, “We got them.” It shouldn’t happen.

Charlotte Hennessy: Can I just—