Public Advocate Bill [HL]

Lord Wills Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wills]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

As some noble Lords may remember, this is the second time I have moved that this Bill be read a second time. The first was more than seven years ago, when it received wide cross-party support. I then outlined how the Bill, which provides better support for victims and families bereaved in public disasters, had grown out of my experience as a Minister who devised the Hillsborough Independent Panel. This Bill has been on quite a journey since then.

The concept of an independent public advocate to support victims of public disasters and families bereaved in them, which is the heart of the Bill, was adopted by the then Prime Minister, the right honourable Theresa May. I pay tribute to her steadfast and continuing support for this concept. She ensured that it was part of the Conservative Party manifesto in 2017 and in the following Queen’s Speech. Since then, Ministers and a consultation came and went, the years went by and nothing happened. My right honourable friend and colleague in the other place, Maria Eagle, repeatedly and heroically introduced a Private Member’s Bill derived from this one in the other place and still nothing happened, but finally, this year, the Government incorporated some elements of my Bill—this Bill— into the Victims and Prisoners Bill, and I place on record my thanks to everybody in the Government, Ministers and officials, who made this happen. I am grateful for their unfailing courtesy over the past seven years in consulting me about this Bill. However, welcome as the Government’s proposals for an independent public advocate are, they are none the less based on the fundamentally flawed assumption that the system as a whole works generally well on behalf those bereaved by, or otherwise victims of, large-scale public disasters such as Hillsborough, so no radical change is needed, merely some improvements around the edge. That is what their proposals represent in contrast to the proposals in this Bill.

If that is indeed the Government’s assumption, I am afraid it is wrong. The fact that, finally, the families bereaved at Hillsborough have been able to achieve much of what they campaigned for over so many years—decades—should not lead to any complacency about the systems currently in place to respond to such public disasters. When the full record of what happened after the Hillsborough disaster is eventually made public, it will show, I believe, how the successful outcome of the Hillsborough Independent Panel was the result of a whole series of fortunate coincidences. There was nothing inevitable about it. Above all, it was the extraordinary persistence, dignity and solidarity of the Hillsborough families’ campaign that generated the momentum that led to the panel and its achievements. This will not necessarily be replicated in similar situations in the future. The system remains fundamentally broken in the support and agency it offers such families.

Now, the government Bill will make progress. Regretfully, I must assume that mine will not in the same way. As a result, I do not intend to rehearse the detail of my Bill in the way that I did seven years ago. Instead, I want to focus on the crucial elements of this Bill that the Government have omitted from their own and to urge them to think again.

Sadly, we must assume that such tragedies involving large-scale loss of life will recur. My Bill seeks to provide a better way of responding to them and does so on the basis that there is an identifiable pathology in the process that follows pretty much all public disasters. The nature and extent of a public disaster demands a response from government. The same questions are asked: who is to blame? What can be done to prevent it happening again? Finding the answers does not put the bereaved families anywhere near the centre of that process. The state naturally assumes for itself the dispensation of justice and the needs and wishes of victims, including the bereaved, are not always paramount. As the process unfolds, there is an inevitable tendency for those in official positions, with all the resources at their disposal, who fear that they might be blamed in some way for what happened, to close ranks. They often skew the results of any investigation, as they are in a position to do so, often funded by the taxpayer. The report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel graphically illustrated this pathology in action, in the way it exposed the behaviour of the police, but it is not only the police that are susceptible to these sorts of behaviours.

As I said seven years ago,

“the interests of justice and good government would not necessarily be best delivered by removing the state altogether from the process of responding to public disasters”.

That clearly is not the case. I said:

“The challenge, therefore, is to strike a better balance between the impartial discharge of justice and good government and protecting the interests and feelings of the bereaved and injured survivors”.—[Official Report, 29/1/16; col. 1521.]


My Bill seeks to establish three pillars of a new system. The first is transparency. Without it, the bereaved will never achieve anything approaching closure and it is difficult, often impossible, for the public policy lessons to be learned and for necessary reforms to be made. The second pillar is the creation of an institutionalised, independent, adequately resourced advocate for the bereaved. Those bereaved in future public disasters should not have to rely on ad hoc remedies such as those that, in the end, delivered some progress for those bereaved at Hillsborough. Finally, the third pillar is the need to ensure that victims and the bereaved have some agency in the process. No longer must they be left on the sidelines, dealing with grief and loss while the state proceeds, apparently on their behalf but without giving them any agency in the process.

The Government have adopted only one of those three pillars, and that only in part. Their proposals do not provide any guaranteed mechanism for securing full transparency, such as that achieved by the Hillsborough Independent Panel. They deny the victims and the bereaved any effective agency. In giving them power to set up an independent public advocate, the government Bill gives the Secretary of State unfettered discretion about whether to appoint one. It gives them similarly unfettered power to dismiss them. They have unfettered powers over whether to appoint a Hillsborough-type panel to secure transparency. Moreover, it appears that the advocate, in its proposals, may produce a report only if the Secretary of State requests it.

The government proposals mean that the victims and the bereaved are being given no effective agency and that transparency might well be obscured. That is precisely what my Bill seeks to achieve. Now, the government view appears to be that, as the Government are democratically accountable, they must be able to wield the executive power for which they will be held to account by government and the electorate. This is not an unreasonable position at all, but it does not mean, in adopting that position, that they have to deny bereaved families any effective agency at all in these matters, which is the current position; nor can they justify any failure to maximise transparency, which, again, appears to be the current position. My Bill could easily be amended, and the Government could easily adopt it, to deal with these problems with the Government’s proposals.

One way forward, for example, might be to give the Secretary of State a legal power to appoint an independent public advocate and/or a public inquiry, but to specify in a way that would be subject to judicial review that they must do so with regard to the views of the bereaved families. The benefits of an independent public advocate, an inquiry and/or a Hillsborough-type panel include cost, timeliness, transparency and any wider public interests.

The points about cost, timeliness and transparency are crucial. One of the lessons of the Hillsborough public inquiry is what it achieved, even 20-odd years after the event, more swiftly and more cheaply than the two public inquiries that preceded it. It would be a much more effective way of securing public policy goals in my view, which is why my Bill is drafted as it is.

Crucially, the Bill also includes the provision that the Secretary of State must produce a debateable report to Parliament justifying why they have or have not exercised this power. That must be published as soon as possible after the public disaster. Any delay at all will only compound the grief and sense of loss of the bereaved families.

The families bereaved at Hillsborough have fought a dignified and indomitable campaign for decades to secure truth and justice for those who they lost. They were traduced in the popular press, particularly by the Sun newspaper, and by the former Prime Minister who has just resigned from Parliament. They have fought a dignified battle in the face of these terrible unjustified attacks on those who they loved and lost.

Today, I am asking the Government to make their legacy of the independent public advocate a meaningful one, and to give them hope that the Government will be prepared to amend the Bill in the ways that I have described. I hope that the Government give me that reassurance today, so that I do not have to persevere any further with a Bill that has already been waiting seven years to be brought into effect. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been a short debate, but I hope it has been another stage in making a profound difference to the lives of those who, in the future, may be involved in public tragedies, which, as the Minister said, are inevitable. I also hope it will make a difference to those who, out of a clear blue sky, find their lives transformed by a terrible public tragedy.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his powerful expression of the need for transparency and better support for the bereaved. I am grateful, as I always am, for the support of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, who reminded us all from direct personal experience that these are human beings at the centre of this. We have to remember that it is people such as his friend whom we have to try to support through this process.

I am also grateful to the Minister for his thoughtful, sympathetic approach to the issues raised by the Bill. I am encouraged—I hope I am not being misled—that he talks about focusing on the means rather than the end, on which we are all agreed. I find it most encouraging because it suggests that the Government’s mind is still open on the important points we have discussed. I hope I am not wrong in interpreting his remarks in that way.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I have to say that I give no commitment of any kind. I would not want anyone to read between the lines. All I am saying is that the Government will listen very carefully to the points being made.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister; I would not dream of expecting him to make any commitments today, but I am grateful for his willingness to listen, because it suggests a willingness to accept amendments that go in a slightly different direction. He rightly points out that this is not the time to debate the Victims and Prisoners Bill, but I draw his attention to his remarks about the complexity of the processes in my Bill. I will not die in a ditch over the drafting of my original Bill; I said seven years ago and am happy to repeat now that I am perfectly willing to accept that it is flawed and needs improvement in many detailed ways. It has never been my intention that it should proceed verbatim, as it were.

However, I worry that, underlying his remarks, he may think there is something innovative about a lot of this, as his remarks about the data controller suggested. I therefore draw his attention to the fact that there are two existing, very successful models that my Bill draws on and which are at its heart. I urge the Government to examine them. The first is the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation; if the Government look again at the remit for that institution, it is very analogous to what is envisaged in my Bill. I urge them to think about adopting this proposal in the Victims and Prisoners Bill, in line with that.

The Minister talked about the complexity of the data controller’s role. It is not actually complex at all; it is literally on the model I initially devised for the Hillsborough Independent Panel—my second example—which everybody agrees was a tremendous success. However, its success was not due to the conception; the primary reason for its success was the extraordinary chairmanship of the right reverend Bishop of Liverpool and all its members bringing specific expertise. I also pay tribute to the Home Office official who provided the secretariat for that panel; it was outstanding work that showed just how wonderful our Civil Service can be. At a time when it is regularly traduced as “The Blob” and all the rest of it, one should look at the work of Home Office officials such as them and just be grateful that they work in public service.

There are existing successful models which this institution in my Bill is based on. I hope that, as we move forward in a co-operative, cross-party way—we have done so until now and I very much hope we can continue in that frame of mind—the Government will bear those models in mind. I look forward to exploring all these issues in due course as the Victims and Prisoners Bill comes before your Lordships’ House. In the meantime, I remain very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part and to the Minister, and I ask that your Lordships give this Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.