Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Lizzi Collinge Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

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

The Hillsborough law we debate today is not an historical problem; it is something that my constituents need right now. I have already spoken in this place about baby Ida Lock, who died after failings in her care, and the incompetent investigation and lack of transparency that followed.

Today I want to talk about another constituent of mine. Vicki had autoimmune diseases, and she had regular treatment for them, often needing steroids. In 2021, Vicki fell pregnant and had a flare-up, which was treated with steroids. Not long after she tragically suffered a miscarriage. Days later she was admitted to hospital with severe abdominal pain and an increased heart rate, and she began to deteriorate.

The differential diagnosis was either an infection or a flare-up of her autoimmune disease.

Vicki kept getting more poorly. She was treated with antibiotics but not given any steroids. Her care was fraught with errors: her lipids were scored incorrectly; the right tests were eventually requested but not carried out in a timely way; and a pharmacist spotted that she had missed crucial medication, but nothing was done. According to her family, the doctors got caught in a loop of circular thinking—they focused on sepsis and covid—even when there was another possibility, particularly with her history of autoimmune problems.

There is a rare but known complication of autoimmune disease called hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, which is a massive overreaction of the immune system that causes hyperinflammation, damaging vital organs. If the hospital had listened to Vicki and done a bone marrow test earlier, that HLH could have been identified, and it is possible that it could have been treated successfully. But once the decision to do the test—it gives results in only 10 minutes—was finally made, it took 18 hours for it to be done. The bone marrow test confirmed that Vicki had HLH. Twenty-four hours later, she died.

Vicki knew that she was having a flare-up, and she said so, but she was not listened to. From her hospital bed, she had written a letter of complaint to the patient advice and liaison service; then, just a week later, she was dead. Her family just want the truth to be recognised, because, in their experience, it has not been. Their experience echoes that of Ida’s parents. The pain is compounded because the family had felt that she was in the right place to be cared for. They trusted the hospital to get it right.

We know that no one goes to work in healthcare to do harm, but doctors and nurses are humans; they will make mistakes, and it is difficult for them to admit that they have harmed someone, so we need to create institutional cultures in which people feel able to speak up and raise concerns. Mistakes are often one-offs, but what is not is the institutional response to these tragedies. The institutional response of cover-up is part of a wider, long-standing pattern of poor culture and weak accountability. What harmed families tell me in the wake of these tragedies is that it is not necessarily the mistake itself that causes so much harm to them but the cover-up and the denial. Families, instead of grieving their loss, are forced to fight for the truth.

My hope is that the Bill will protect victims and their families—like Vicki’s, like Ryan and Sarah Lock and those who lost loved ones at Hillsborough—from this prolonged trauma. They deserve honesty, accountability and humanity from the very start, because that is how we rebuild trust.

Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting)

Lizzi Collinge Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th November 2025 Public Bill Committees

[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.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Seamus Logan]

To be clear, it depends.

[Lizzi Collinge]

Q Professor Lewis, you spoke about the burden of proof lying with the prosecution. Have I understood correctly that if someone puts forward the defence of reasonable excuse—I think this is the phrasing—it would then be for the prosecution to prove that it was false rather than for the defendant to prove that it was true?

Professor Lewis: Yes. I would phrase it slightly differently: I would say that the prosecution will have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there was no reasonable excuse, rather than thinking about truth or falsity. But, yes, once the defendant introduces evidence that raises the defence of reasonable excuse, they will have met their evidential burden, and the persuasive or legal burden will then rest on the prosecution.

[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.