Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)]

This legislation is long overdue. Looking back at the scandals where the state has deceived the people, some of which go back to the aftermath of the second world war, we see a long list of how the great British state has let down the people it is there to serve. In all these scandals involving the state versus the people, it is ordinary people who had to fight long and hard to get justice. In the contaminated blood scandal, it has taken over 50 years. For nuclear test veterans, it goes back to the 1950s. In the case of Hillsborough, it took 36 years. The list goes on. All these scandals demonstrate that there is something wrong at the heart of our state—that the state places itself above the people, will not allow itself to be seen to be wrong and, worse, refuses to offer redress for its wrongdoing.

I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood—addressing one of the worst examples the state deceiving people over many decades. At the start of his May 2024 report, Sir Brian Langstaff, the chair of the infected blood inquiry, sets out the depth of the state’s deception—how the state knew as early as the mid-1940s the dangers posed by transfusions of plasma, and the consequences. The risk of spreading infections through transfusions was known in the early days of the NHS, yet this did not result in research or any attempts to ensure that blood was being sourced from safe providers. The state doubled down on its denial while continuing to use products that put people at greater risk. Sir Brian goes on to accuse the state of a catalogue of failings, deliberate lies and obfuscation. He exposes the scale of the deception and how the state failed to carry out research to make products safer, which could have saved lives and reduced infections. This in turn led to products not being HIV-free.

At Treloar’s school, pupils with haemophilia were given contaminated blood products as part of an experiment. That is probably the most chilling part of the whole scandal. The former pupils of Treloar’s have called themselves “human guinea pigs”; those are their own words. What is worse is that the pupils were told that they had glandular fever. Their families were told not to tell anyone that it was HIV. The lack of a duty to tell the truth allowed the state to ignore the needs of the victims and their families. They were offered no help, support or counselling. The silence allowed the state to avoid being held to account—something that we have seen again and again in the Hillsborough story, the Post Office Horizon story and all the rest. This has to stop, and the Bill will at last give a voice to victims.

Although candour in public officials is welcome, the Bill fails to impose a similar duty on our media. Time and again, we have seen a significant section of our national media collaborate with officials, which has obstructed justice, misled the public and led to harassment of survivors and their families. Perhaps the most devastating example is the role of The Sun in respect of the Hillsborough tragedy; the paper directly conspired with South Yorkshire police to accuse fans of causing the disaster. I hope that as the Bill passes through all its stages, we can address this omission.

I welcome the Bill. We MPs come here to speak truth to power on behalf of our constituents. Now our constituents will have the right to force power to speak truth to them.

Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Catherine Atkinson]

The Office of the Chief Coroner has continued work to improve access to prevention of future deaths reports, while the Government seek to strengthen arrangements for responding to concerns raised through them, including better and more strategic use of technology. In addition to the work that the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee is undertaking, there is clearly work to be done in relation to inquests and in relation to inquiries and their recommendations, and I look forward to working on that.

[Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)]

Do the Minister and the Government agree with the principle that an independent body should oversee the Government’s performance in responding to inquiry recommendations? Is that the way we are going to go forwards? The way that the Government—not just this one, but others in the past—have responded to recommendations from inquiries has, to say the least, required improvement for a very long time. Can we be assured that independence will be introduced into the scrutiny process?

[Catherine Atkinson]

It is clear that there needs to be public confidence about what happens to any recommendations, and this is therefore an area of work that is being considered. I am happy to ensure that my hon. Friend is kept up to date with the work as it continues.

I will now make some progress. Transforming the ability of investigations to get to the truth is essential, and I hope that the House recognises how far we have come. On Second Reading, the Prime Minister said that we would only strengthen this Bill, while affirming that we would always protect national security. The amendments I have mentioned do both.

I now turn to the Government’s remaining amendments. On legal aid, families attending inquests have for too long found themselves, in their darkest moments, facing public authorities represented by large legal teams while they have been left to navigate complex proceedings without legal representation. The Bill finally addresses that imbalance through the largest expansion of legal aid in a generation, granting access to non-means-tested legal aid to families at any inquest where a public authority is an interested person.

We have tabled amendments to ensure that this new entitlement operates as intended—first, to make it clear that legal aid will also be available when an individual is named as an interested person on behalf of a public authority or Government Department and, secondly, to simplify how the legal aid system operates so that it is more effective and easier to manage for providers and the Legal Aid Agency. The amendments mean that the expansion will operate efficiently from the outset.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald). I share his views about the need for action on the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys inquiry.

When I first considered running for public office, my wife said to me that she was sure that at some point I would end up voting for things with which she did not agree, but that I must promise her that I would do one thing, and that was never to engage with The Sun. That is one small snapshot of the depth of feeling in her family, who are from Wavertree and Kirkby, and in families across the Merseyside region. They are well represented today by all my colleagues from that part of the world, but in particular by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne), whose speech was one of the finest I have heard in this place—and outside it as well.

I also, of course, pay tribute to the Hillsborough families whose courage and determination have brought us to this point. For decades those families were forced to fight not only with their grief, but against institutions that should have served them. They faced delay, denial and the closing of ranks. They were made to prove the truth again and again, while those in positions of authority avoided responsibility. No family should ever have to endure that. It is a credit to them that they did not give up, and their campaign has changed our country’s understanding of public accountability.

The duty of candour in the Bill makes it harder for public bodies to hide the truth, mislead the public, or obstruct those seeking answers. It says that public service must mean honesty, especially when things have gone badly wrong. I pay tribute to the Ministers who have led the Bill through the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who is sitting in front of me and who also made an excellent speech. It takes great bravery for the Executive to agree to restrict their own power, and I think that applying the offence they have created of misleading the public to senior members of the Government is a courageous thing for a Government to step up and agree to do. I therefore support clause 11, but I also feel strongly that it ought to apply to all of us as politicians, and I am grateful to the more than 30 Members on both sides of the House who supported my amendments 13 to 18 to that effect. In the age of disinformation and the rise of autocracy, politicians who intentionally or recklessly engage in serious or repeated dishonesty on a matter of significant public concern must face consequences, and I hope to hear more from the Minister about that.

None the less, I am firmly in support of the Bill. Nothing can bring back those 97 people who went to watch a football match on a sunny afternoon, or return the years taken from the families in their long struggle for truth, but we can learn from that injustice. We can support bereaved families at inquests, and we can ensure that future families do not face the same walls of silence and obstruction. I pay tribute again to all those who have campaigned for justice, and I am pleased to support the Bill today.

[Clive Efford]

I decided at a very late stage to speak in this debate, because I chair the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood and I wanted to add my voice on behalf of all the people who campaigned on that scandal and express their appreciation for the work of the Hillsborough families and what they have achieved for our country. Ordinary people up and down the country will have a power to take on the state in the future and not to be crushed, as the state has attempted to do in respect of so many other scandals that have been mentioned today.

I pay tribute to the MPs from the north-west—not just Liverpool—who, over the many years that I have been in this House, have campaigned consistently on this issue, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle) and my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg). I should also acknowledge Steve Rotheram, who spoke out very powerfully on behalf of the Hillsborough families, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne), who spoke so passionately earlier. I pay tribute to all of them, but it tells us something: in spite of the fact that some very fine Members of Parliament have been raising this issue over a very long period of time, it has taken this long to get to where we are today.

That shows us how important it is that we are tenacious and stick with our campaigns, and also that we have oversight of the Government and can hold them to account, to make sure that they do not treat people in the way that they have attempted to do. The cover-up, and the opposition to the campaigns for justice, tells us that we can never drop our guard in holding people and the state to account, so I really welcome the fact that we will pass this Bill today.

I could stand here and read out many examples of the way that individuals were treated by the state in the contaminated blood scandal, but one particularly springs to mind. At the age of 18 months, a baby was experimented on, without anybody being told. The baby was infected with hepatitis, but this was not discovered until the baby became a teenager. The parent found out, and the state made her believe that she had given consent for her baby to be experimented on at the age of 18 months. That parent went on to attempt suicide. It just shows the scale and depth of the cruelty that people have had to endure in that scandal and others. It is one of the most powerful testaments that I have come across, and it shows why we need to fight for justice in this place for the people who suffered in all the scandals that we have spoken about.

I will discuss two issues. First, I see the duty of candour as part of a framework that we need to put in place, and we must have a national compensation body. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority, the independent body for the contaminated blood scandal, is a unique body that has been set up to pay out compensation. It is learning a lot about how to go through this process, and it would be wrong to have to relearn the process all over again with every subsequent scandal where compensation is paid out. We should set up a national body for compensation to perform that task, to ensure that we keep in place the knowledge and expertise that has been learned and do not lose it.

Secondly, we need a national body for oversight of the recommendations of inquiries, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) has set out in his new clauses 5 and 6, which I fully support. We have had over 400 recommendations from inquiries since 2024, but who has oversight of those recommendations and how the Government are responding to them? Sir Brian Langstaff, who chaired the contaminated blood inquiry, reported in July 2024, but he deliberately kept his inquiry open because he wanted to see how the Government reacted to his recommendations. In 2025, he reconvened that inquiry, took further evidence and gave further recommendations because of the tardy way in which the Government were responding to his recommendations. We cannot be in that position again, and we cannot rely on the Sir Brian Langstaffs of this world to be that guarded and to protect our rights in that way every time. We must have a body that is independent of Government, and that will scrutinise how they behave and how they react to the recommendations of public inquiries that we the public pay for.

Finally, I would like to congratulate the Hillsborough families. We all owe you a debt of gratitude.

[Catherine Atkinson]

With the leave of the House, it is an honour and a privilege to close today’s debate. This Bill exists because people refused to be silent, and because families who had lost everything were told to move on, stop asking questions and accept half-truths at best, bare-faced lies at worst. Instead, they chose to fight. For too long in this country when a disaster has struck, the balance of power has lain with the state, not with the people who suffered harm. The people it should have protected were left to battle institutions with limitless resources, lawyers paid for from the public purse and a culture focused on defending reputations rather than discovering the truth. This Bill will finally put that imbalance right. It shifts the system away from secrecy and defensiveness towards openness, honesty and accountability.

I want to thank Members from all parties who have contributed so passionately today and throughout the passage of the Bill. I am so grateful for the way they have worked with us constructively and collaboratively, rightly challenging us, but always with a shared purpose. That is this House at its very best, coming together to rise above party political advantage for justice and the good of the British people. That is what we have done with the Hillsborough law, and it means that we have been able to bring forward amendments that genuinely strengthen this Bill, not water it down.

I will address the points made in the debate. First, on national security, this Bill was paused to ensure we get it right. This legislation is about addressing the wrongs we have seen at Hillsborough and in so many other scandals. The duty of candour is about being honest when things go wrong; it is emphatically not about changing assessments of whether national security information can or cannot be disclosed publicly in legal proceedings, and it is a mischaracterisation to suggest that it does so. The families and campaigners have never wanted information to go into the public domain that would put people at risk. Certain types of legal proceeding can compel national security information—that happens now—and law and practice have been developed over time to protect information.

The Bill and the amendments repeatedly make it clear that the Bill does not override existing laws, but instead draws on existing safeguards. We have always had the tools in law to protect national security information—for example, restriction orders and public interest immunity applications. Determining what and how sensitive information could be published was my main area of practice as a barrister for many years before coming to this place. Nothing in this Bill takes those away, and we have used the past months to stress-test these provisions rigorously and ensure that is the case.

The right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) asked about the time taken and if our position had changed. The Government have been consistent that the risk comes from individuals who may not be aware of the full picture, and it has therefore been essential to be able to address that. The shadow Justice Secretary’s amendment and the Government amendments are based on the same premise: that there needs to be a corporate check on national security information going from an individual employee to an inquiry, because individuals may not know the full sensitivity. But the Government amendments provide a more precise process for what the head must do with that information, using existing national security safeguards, and so avoid the broad discretion that had caused Members concern.