Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Lord Sahota Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a real honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. What I want to say has mostly been said but, still, I shall continue. I support the Bill because it addresses one of the most important principles in public life: when a state is responsible for serving the public, it must also be accountable to the public.

The lessons of Hillsborough are painful and profound. When things went wrong, institutions closed rank, information was withheld, responsibility was deflected, and bereaved families were left fighting for the truth. That is why I particularly welcome the Bill’s duty of candour. Public authorities and public officials should have nowhere to hide. They should be required to act with transparency, frankness and honesty, and to assist inquiries and investigations in finding the truth.

The Bill provides criminal sanction for serious breaches, which I wholeheartedly support as well. This matters because accountability cannot simply mean blaming an institution after the event. There must be a responsibility for the individual who makes decisions or who withholds information.

In my public life over the last 30 years, I have seen some incompetent people in charge of important decision-making where their first instinct is to protect themselves, hiding behind institutions and their departments. Most say that they are acting in the best public interest. I welcome that the Bill also challenges that culture.

Of course, we must be careful when forming criminal law. The threshold must be high and nobody should face imprisonment merely for making an honest mistake. However, when there is serious wrongdoing, dishonesty or deliberate failure to uphold fundamental responsibilities, there must be consequences.

I also strongly welcome the principle of parity of representation. This is about fairness. A bereaved family should not have to face a public authority equipped with lawyers and resources while the family struggles to obtain equivalent representation. The ordinary citizen, the little man or woman, must have a genuine opportunity to challenge the machinery of the state.

The Post Office Horizon scandal demonstrated why the Bill is so urgently needed. Thousands of postmasters were wrongly accused of stealing money from the Post Office, while serious problems with the computer system were known about. Yet those postmasters were left to carry the blame.

Windrush is another example. The independent review found that this was not simply bureaucratic bad luck but a profound institutional failure. The hostile environment in which this policy developed had devastating consequences for hundreds of law-abiding citizens—British citizens—many of whom had lived here since childhood. Some lost their job and their livelihood, and, in some cases, were wrongly removed from this country. What happened to them was reprehensible. I wish there had been such a law then to ensure that those responsible, including the Home Office of the day, could properly be held to account.

Then there was the Covid-19 pandemic and the controversy surrounding public procurement, including the so-called VIP lane. Billions of pounds of public money were committed in extraordinary circumstances, and serious questions have subsequently been raised about value for money, transparency and accountability. I hope this Government will pursue every opportunity to recover public money where it was improperly spent.

I hope the Bill will ensure that the power of the state is matched by an equal obligation to be accountable to the people it serves, rather than leaving families begging for information and truth. For those reasons, I strongly support the Bill and look forward to helping strengthen it as it proceeds through this House.