Kieran Mullan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do we take it from that that you think most organisations do attempt to behave appropriately and admit it when they have done the wrong thing? Ron Warmington: I do not deal with most organisations, but the Post Office was exceptionally bad in its behaviour. I think it originally intended to work with my company to seek the truth; there were individuals who clearly wanted to do that, but preservation of the brand and short-termism—there was the misconception that pretending that the organisation never makes any mistakes at all was going to be good for the corporation in the long term. It is complete nonsense, but that was the philosophy that had spread throughout the organisation. I am 76 years old; I was raised in an era when my word was my bond and you did not need to have everything in writing. Corporate behaviour—unless I am misguided —was much better then. I hate the way the corporate world has gone, so I guess I was not that surprised at what we found in the Post Office.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q In your experience of organisations that have delivered what you might call a duty of candour without this legal sanction, either successfully or unsuccessfully, what are the key culture changes we need to ensure that organisations deliver? Lord Evans of Weardale: Your use of the word culture strikes me as being very important. We all know that you can have loads and loads of rules, but if you have a culture that says, “Actually, we don’t really mind about that,” they will not necessarily work. Therefore, ensuring that an organisation is actually educated in its ethical responsibilities seems to me to be critical. I know from the time that I was in the Security Service that quite a lot of work was done on this, and I believe that the same now applies in the other intelligence agencies. Any intelligence service has the potential to abuse the powers entrusted to it by Parliament or Government, and it is very important that there are constraints on that; part of that is people understanding their ethical responsibilities and the fact that there are really effective speak-up channels, so that, if somebody has a concern, it can be voiced safely and people feel they have permission to raise concerns.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Some people say there is and some people say there is not; I guess it is for us to try to work that out. Thank you for your assistance.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Would you say, therefore, that the amendments that they have put forward are the ones that you think are necessary for the Bill to reach what you have described as an 100% threshold? Andy Burnham: We certainly support all those amendments. I do not need to go through them—you know what they are—but I would like to speak about two of them. The first is a Government amendment, I think, which may have come forward to the Committee already, on inquiries and the inquiries that are to be covered by the Bill. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, I have convened two major inquiries. The first was the Kerslake inquiry into what happened at the Manchester Arena attack. The second was a major review into child sexual exploitation, or grooming, in Greater Manchester. I pushed for the Government to introduce that further amendment, because my experience with those reviews was, first, that Greater Manchester police was not entirely accurate in the account that it gave to the Kerslake report, which remains of deep concern to me, because clearly a report of that nature is not done under oath. We initiated it because we felt it to be right that, immediately after the attack—we could not wait for the public inquiry—we should gather learnings for our police force and fire service. It is barely believable that an inaccurate version of events was provided to Kerslake by Greater Manchester police. Secondly on grooming, it was my experience that, through various reports into the issue in Manchester, Rochdale and Oldham, the inquiry team found repeatedly that public servants refused to give evidence to them. There was no duty to assist in place, therefore public servants could do that without any consequence. On those issues, I hope you can understand why I pressed very hard for an amendment to ensure that the Bill covers inquiries ordered by combined authorities and local authorities. I believe the Government have created a serious harm test for those inquiries. We are not necessarily against that, but we hope the Committee will assist us in getting a clear definition of what that actually means. In the case of grooming, I did not necessarily have all the evidence at the time that serious harm had taken place; it was the risk that serious harm had taken place that led me to want to convene that inquiry. There is an important distinction there; I do not think a serious harm test should rule out the grooming example. Equally, it has been put to us that inquiries commissioned by local authorities on matters relating to fraud—I think the Edinburgh tram one is an example here—might cause serious harm to the reputation of a local authority. Should they be out of scope? We would say not. We could accept a serious harm test as long as it is reasonably widely drafted to cover all the examples that I have given. I think I have a position that may go a little further than the Hillsborough Law Now campaign on parity. I personally believe very strongly that this needs to be a firm principle in the Bill. Margaret Aspinall gave evidence to Parliament shortly after the second inquest and she recounted the experience from the first Hillsborough inquest of having to scratch around to fund her own legal costs and having to cash the cheque from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in respect of her son James to pay for her legal fees. I brought forward the original Bill with that experience absolutely seared into my mind—how any bereaved parent should have to do that and go into a courtroom raw with grief, up against the highest KCs in the land who are often employed by public bodies lawyered up to the max. To me, it is a really important principle that there is parity in those courtrooms. Having a level playing field is a big guarantee of getting the truth, and I personally would like to see an amendment to the Bill that says that there must be a comparable level between the hourly rate of the KCs acting for the state and the KCs acting for bereaved families. To me, that is what that principle of parity actually means. I appreciate the strides that have been made here in terms of access to legal aid and access to legal representation—they are huge strides—but let us go further: the Bill should do 100% of a job, not 80% or 90%.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q You mentioned what the coroner might choose to ask or not ask. What is your experience of the variability in the way in which coroners approach these issues? Deborah Coles: There is a lot to be said about the inconsistency of the coronial system. Different coroners approach their roles in very different ways. It is quite hard for an individual coroner when they are confronted with teams of state lawyers representing different interests to then try and properly represent the interests of an individual family. Some coroners can try and do that, but that does not take away from the fact that it is the relationship that the bereaved family have with their lawyer that can often ensure that the questions of the utmost importance to a bereaved family are actually asked.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do you think that the fact that there will be criminal sanctions at the end of the process will be enough to put people off engaging in that sort of behaviour again in the future? Ron Warmington: I would hope so. Every board—I have been on a lot of them—is, every now and then, trying to deal with something that has been screwed up badly, and a decision has to be made: “What are we going to do about it? Are we going to front it out, or are we going to try to cover it up?” It does not take much to shift that decision in the right direction. This measure might be enough to do that.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Mayor Burnham, what reason was given by the Government for not including, in the initial draft of the Bill, those provisions that the Hillsborough Law Now group and yourselves thought were needed? Andy Burnham: There was a concern that, at a local level, inquiries could be launched for fairly frivolous or political reasons. None of us wants a sort of industry in local inquiries using the provisions of the Bill. I understand that concern, and I could accept a serious harm test—as I said to the Minister last week—but it should not rule out major wrongdoing, particularly in relation to fraud. I accept that there could be a hurdle, but there is work to be done by the Committee to establish the precise nature of that hurdle. Obviously, you do not want to see the wasteful use of public funds and the over-commissioning of inquiries—I accept that—but I still think that there needs to be a definition of serious harm. There was initially a concern about public funds and the affordability of the commitment to parity. Again, I understand that, but Hillsborough Law Now and we would argue that the Bill could lead to lower public spending. Its provisions will help us to get to the truth more quickly and therefore reduce the length of public inquiries. The Bill also creates an incentive for the state to spend less on its own legal representation if there is a duty of parity that bites hard. If there is a rough equivalence in terms of the hourly rate, the state suddenly does not have an incentive to hire the best paid KCs in the land. At the moment, as I understand it, the state is completely free to do that. The Bill needs to create a mechanism that limits state expenditure. The savings from that will then help to pay for representation at a balanced level on the other side. I really wish to see the strongest possible principle of parity of arms in the final Bill.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Hello. I am the shadow Minister. Thank you, Mr De Simone, for coming to speak to us. It is important for us to have a context and understanding of your views more generally on how we scrutinise our security services. I read with interest your account of what had happened with the legal challenge that the Government put forward to your report in relation to Officer X. It seemed to me that you were describing the fact that there were separate advocates to consider legal evidence, as opposed to your own advocates—that there was evidence you were never going to be allowed to hear—and that you were saying that that in itself was not right. Do you accept that there are times that there should be secret and distinct processes to maintain secrecy, even in the cases of public interest journalism? Daniel De Simone: I certainly do. I do not think it is wrong that there are special advocates in closed material procedures; it is now an established part of a court process. What it does do, though, is place a special responsibility on MI5 to be candid, because their evidence is often very important in very significant cases, where there has been significant loss of life, where people’s citizenship is being removed or where people are being deprived of their liberties. That evidence is often heard in secret—so, away from the people most affected. That places a special responsibility on MI5—which they accept; their current director general has spoken about this—because there is a special responsibility on secret organisations to be candid and honest. That is why the duty of candour is particularly important for MI5.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Dr Chopra, there is a challenge in the medical world. For example, you might have a cohort of people who think they are discharging their duty of candour by reporting various things about covid vaccines and the harm they have been doing, which we would not necessarily consider a good-faith disclosure. You obviously have to deal with that all the time when whistleblowers come to talk to you about something in their organisation that is not right, and you have to try to make a judgment. How do you balance the duty to listen to people with recognising that they can, either in good faith or bad faith, report things that are not genuinely a matter of concern? Dr Chopra: When we approach looking at the duty of candour in regulation 20, we approach it both at the registration phase, when we are registering providers, and at the inspection and assessment stages, which then determines whether we take any enforcement action. We have an assessment framework that sets out particular questions that we look at when we assess how an organisation is approaching its duty of candour. Within that, there will be policies and procedures that people need to follow. How do they deal with whistleblowers? How do they deal with people who raise concerns? To go back to Helen’s point, how are they ensuring that training is taking place for frontline clinicians, so that they have a mechanism to raise concerns or incidents that might trigger the statutory duty of candour? That is how we look at the overarching policies, processes and procedures that will satisfy us that an organisation is ready to be registered, and that we can look at them when we are going out on inspections. That is how we look at those issues.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I do not know whether you heard, but in an earlier session I asked how we are going to decide what is sufficient or adequate representation for public authorities. The evidence we heard was that coroners are very well placed to adjudicate on what would be adequate and appropriate representation. Do you share that view? Judge Durran: If you are making the coroner the judge of that, you are creating an additional burden on the coroner. It may be quite difficult for them to go about getting that information. I note that in clause 18 of the Bill as drafted there are three suggestions on how that might be considered. I would invite the Committee, in particular in relation to the importance of the issues under investigation, to look at the sort of things that might encourage the engagement of public authorities using lawyers. I might suggest complex legal principles, potential for a coroner to be invited to consider multiple conclusions, the arguable engagement of article 2, the potential for a prevention of future death report to have a national impact, and whether there are issues that might be important to the wider public interest. Those are the sorts of factors I would venture to suggest ought to be considered in assessing whether lawyers ought to be involved.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Hello, all. I am the shadow Justice Minister. Thank you for coming and giving evidence to us today. Mr Warmington, in your view, what material difference would have been made to the Horizon scenario had the provisions in the Bill in relation to a duty of candour already been in place? Ron Warmington: Thank you for the question. I think it would have made a difference. I have been involved in companies that are steeped in ethical behaviour and have codes of conduct and sign-offs each year to confirm that people understand the letter as well as the spirit of the rules. What we encountered was what I have described in the past as weasel wording: straight questions altered to suit the questions that the recipient would have preferred to have asked of them, and answers that were seemingly compelling but actually not even, in some cases, telling the truth, let alone the whole truth. It should not have been, but it became a battle—a sort of warfare. It was completely unexpected by me that that behaviour would occur. I have dealt with out-and-out crooks before, but when it comes to that behaviour from the top brass and then the behaviour, as a contagion, going right through the company, I had not really encountered that before. That needs wholesale ethical change, and I am not sure an Act of Parliament can enforce that, but it will be a good thing to try.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for that opening statement. It applies to anybody who might have criticisms of elements of the Bill or views on it; we should not translate those into a lack of sympathy for the families or what they have gone through. As time is short, it is easier to ask you outright: what concerns do you have about how the Bill might be operationalised? Judge Durran: There are a number of aspects. First is the provision of non-means-tested legal aid to bereaved families. That representation has to be available as soon as possible to enable families to participate throughout the inquest process. If the families are not represented at early stages, the coroner has to do one of two things—either delay any inquest procedures until the family are represented, or continue without family representation, which deprives them of their voice. Coroners are concerned about whether there are sufficient lawyers available to undertake this sort of work. It is important to recognise the other side of that equation in relation to legal representation for public authorities. The criteria currently in clause 18 suggest what gives parity of arms. It is important to recognise that public authority lawyers are very often a great help to coroners. In cases where there are voluminous amounts of material, they help the coroner to put that material into paginated bundles and deal with redactions. If that practical help is taken away, the coroner and the coroner officers will have to take up that work, which would usually be done by others. That means that coroner officers are less able to engage with bereaved families and coroners themselves will have more work to do, which will inevitably impact the number of inquests that they can hear. I am concerned about the suggestion that there should be an overriding objective to ensure that “affected persons”, which effectively means the family, are given greater ability than others to participate in inquests—if there is to be parity of arms, that means everybody. Although a coroner will always do their best, I hope, to facilitate the effective participation of a family, everyone should have equal rights in the objective of answering the four questions.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The Bill’s provisions essentially ask public bodies to ensure just that they are representing themselves in a “reasonable” manner. How would you even begin to advise a public body about what would count as unreasonable versus reasonable levels of representation at an inquest? Richard Miller: The starting point would be the coroner, who will be a qualified lawyer and therefore very used to making assessments about what is necessarily and reasonably incurred by way of legal expense and legal work. They will be in as good a position as anybody to judge whether what the public body is doing is reasonable. It is a standard part of civil litigation that you have to justify your costs as necessary and reasonable, so it would not be a new requirement; it would just be a new forum within which that requirement was applying. The lawyers advising public bodies would already be well used to identifying what is necessary and reasonable in any given circumstance. Obviously, they will need to calibrate that advice in the light of this legislation, but it is not a new skill—it is a not new judgment that they will have to make. It is something that they already do.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Okay. On the first point you made about language, are there specific ways in which you would change the language? Would there be different words or terminology? Cindy Butts: Yes, I would want to see some of the language that is reflected in both the Hillsborough charter and the Victims and Prisoners Act—the section that deals with the Independent Public Advocate, where it speaks to the moral importance of accountability and truth telling—rather than what is there now, which is much more legalistic and technical. I do not think that that necessarily requires an amendment; it requires careful redrafting, which can be done quite easily. I am happy to spell that out and flesh it out in written evidence, if that would be helpful.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am the shadow Minister. I want to begin by thanking you both so much for coming. What you and the other families have been through is horrendous. I want to pay tribute to the courage and perseverance that you have shown, along with the other families, in persisting in raising these issues on behalf of your lost loved ones. It would be helpful for the Committee to hear from you both directly what the impact has been on you and your families of having to go through what you did and what you hope might be different for other families in future. Jenni Hicks: What we did go through was that we did not get our truth for 24 years, which is cruel and unacceptable. That has to change. We had many, many challenges in that journey. The main challenge of all—on a personal level—was becoming childless, and all the grief and things that go with that. On top of that we then had a fight just to get the truth about how our daughters, Trevor’s and my daughters, died. Obviously there was a huge state cover-up. There were lies and corruption going on, with horrendous and untrue things in the media. The Liverpool fans were wrongly blamed—and we are Liverpool fans, so not only were we bereaved, but we felt we were somehow at fault for our daughters’ deaths, too. The whole thing was horrendous. It actually prevents you from moving forward with your grief because it becomes about the event, and not so much about your loss. You have to deal with your loss at a later stage. The whole thing was absolutely cruel—I really have no words to describe how awful it was, and it must not happen to other people in the future. We had, as I say, various challenges on our journey for the truth. The Peter Taylor inquiry was the first one. Peter Taylor did get to the truth, but the Crown Prosecution Service did not act upon that. If the CPS had acted on the Taylor inquiry, we could have got to our truth more quickly. Various things happened—is this the kind of thing you want to know? We had a judicial review. You probably know the whole of the things that we went through. To be quite truthful, we tried everything, including a private prosecution, but we seemed to be snookered every inch of the way. The one thing that did get us our truth was the Hillsborough independent panel, the independent panel and the attorneys following up on its results—they were absolutely marvellous, actually. That was down to Lord Michael Wills and Gordon Brown, and to Theresa May, who carried on with that when the Conservative Government came in. If it had not been for those people, we would still have been looking for our truth. The Hillsborough independent panel findings led to Dominic Grieve quashing the original inquest verdict of accidental death and announcing a new inquest, which of course, finally—after 26 years, would you believe it—meant we got the correct inquest verdict of unlawful killing. I am trying to précis this down, because I know we do not have a lot of time, but that is basically a very quick version of what went on, but to me, it was the Hillsborough independent panel. I have read through the Bill and things, but I would like to see the public advocate team that we have now used in a similar way, to be able to retrieve the documentation that you need. If we had been able to do that at a far earlier stage, we would not have had to wait 26 years for the correct inquest verdict. I really do think that the public advocate team should have powers similar to those of the HIP—or the same as the panel had. In the first instance, they should not just be about tea and sympathy and pointing you in the right direction; they should be about more than that. It should be about being able to retrieve the documentation needed, particularly if there are lies being told and it is a state cover-up. We need that documentation far sooner. For me, with my personal experiences, without that we will still have long delays. Yes, it will be good to have a better duty of candour, a duty of candour with consequences, and obviously I think we should have more a duty of conduct, rather than just a code of conduct. That would make a huge difference as well. They should be statutory duties, not just codes of conduct, which is just people making up their own rules as they go along, I think. Those are my feelings on it and that is what I would really like to see. I also think it is important to implement Pete Weatherby’s important amendments to the Bill. They should be implemented straight away, to be quite honest with you. The other question I would like to ask—I have written it down, so that I do not forget—is this: are we going to have funding for inquests and for whatever families there are? I would like a little more detail on how that is going to work for families, please, if someone could help me with that. It has not been made clear. It was just said that we will now be able to have legal aid, but I am not quite sure how that is going to work, because what about in split families? By the time my ex-husband and I got to our first inquest, we were already on the road to divorce—we had split up. Would we both be able to have equal representation?

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q This might be a timing issue, as you mentioned how short your time in post has been, but was your office consulted in the drafting of the Bill in any way, or did you just see it when it was published like everybody else? Cindy Butts: No, I just saw it when it was published, and that is because I have been in role for only two months.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do you think we need another body to do the job of following up on PFDs specifically? Professor Fowler: No, I do not think we do.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  You are doing a great job.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Are those your key points? I have some further questions. Cindy Butts: They are my key points, but I think there is one more that I want to bring to your attention. As the Bill is currently drafted, victims and bereaved families have no formal role in shaping guidance, oversight or the implementation of the duty of candour. Given that the Bill is derived from the experiences of the Hillsborough families and so many others who have faced tragedy, those ought to be hardwired into the Act itself so that reform is something that is never done to them, but always with them. There should be a way in which families have a formal role, working alongside the Ethics and Integrity Commission, to ensure that the Bill is not procedural and that it works in practice. That is fundamentally missing, and it should be corrected.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q This is a separate line of questioning, but the question of whether the experience of the coroners process is always a positive one for families is not a new issue. Some of my constituents have had what I think I can fairly say were not positive experiences, where coroners have had to be changed, and only because those constituents raised concerns. Do you still have concerns that there is not consistency in the fair management of inquests, from the perspective of bereaved families? Judge Durran: Every coroner is an independent judicial office holder. I can give guidance, but every case and every inquest will be fact-specific. One of my responsibilities as chief coroner of England and Wales is to provide leadership with the intention of promoting consistency among coroners. A considerable piece of work in achieving that objective was the “Chief Coroner’s Guidance for Coroners on the Bench”, which is a bench book—a “how to do it”. That has received a very favourable response for helping, I hope, to frame decision-making processes. It is a publication; although its intention is to assist coroners, it is a public-facing document and available for anyone who is an interested person. Particularly—as I have emphasised at training, which is another of my responsibilities for coroners—bereaved families who are not represented in inquests should have access to that publication, because they can use that document to hold coroners to account in saying, “You are not following the Chief Coroner’s guidance, designed to promote consistency.” I am sad and disappointed that people may not have had a positive experience from an inquest, but we are, I believe, making considerable progress in promoting greater consistency.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am the shadow Minister. Could you begin by telling us, given your experience of what happened at Grenfell and the investigations that followed, the key things that you think the Bill needs to address? Edward Daffarn: Ordinarily, I find it much easier to respond to questions, but in this instance I made some notes that I would like to try to communicate to you. It could go wrong and I might have to ask you to ask me questions. The thing with Grenfell is that it is so complicated. There are so many tributaries and so many issues. I have spent a little bit of time trying to relate what happened to us at Grenfell to the Bill. I have broken it down into three parts. The first part is an introduction explaining why the Bill is so important and why it is relevant to Grenfell. A lot of the relevance to Grenfell is also relevant to all the other public inquiries and investigations that have taken place over the last 30 years—on Hillsborough, infected blood, the Manchester Arena. There are so many similarities, but I would like to spend three or four moments on each. The second part is about the need for culture change within organisations, and how the Bill can assist that. The third part that I wanted to address is how the Bill can assist in getting to the truth in public inquiries. Please bear with me; if things go wrong I will let you know and ask you to ask me questions. At the heart of what I believe is that we need this Act to be implemented without delay and not to be watered down. There is a statement by Bishop James Jones: “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”. That was the title of his Hillsborough report. Those words are so powerful. They sum up exactly what our position was as bereaved people and as survivors after the Grenfell Tower fire—not only after the fire but in the way we had been treated beforehand. It was this total powerlessness against forces that we had no control over. I truly believe that this Bill can act almost as a silver bullet that could change all that. I will go into some of the reasons in a minute. I want to talk a little bit about our public inquiry. At the beginning of the inquiry, Richard Millett, who at the time was a QC, asked all of the corporate core participants to take responsibility, tell the truth and help us to get to what we needed to know. At the end of the public inquiry, he said that the “merry-go-round of buck-passing” still played and that the melody was still being heard. That was after nearly five years of a public inquiry—the truth was not being heard. In their closing statements to the public inquiry, the core participants gave evidence for two-and-a-half days. Again, Richard Millet stated that if everything the core participants said was true, not a single person was to blame for the Grenfell Tower fire. Imagine sitting in and listening to that evidence over all those years and then, at the end of it, not a single person had taken responsibility for what had happened to us. The inquiry concluded that the core participants were guilty of “systematic dishonesty”, which led to the totally avoidable deaths of 72 people. We need to use this Bill to make sure that nothing like that can ever happen again. Grenfell United attended an inquest family day and left understanding that the families wanted three things. They want to stop public officers from lying and covering up when things go wrong. They want a duty to proactively assist and disclose information to public inquiries. They also want parity of arms—true proportionality in representation in terms of legal aid in front of public inquiries. How would the Bill address those changes? Obviously, there is the duty of candour, transparency and frankness, a duty to go further than not telling lies, but to proactively assist in getting to the truth in public inquiries, and to change the culture of public authorities and the public officers within those authorities to instil a code of conduct, ethics and values. That is my first part—that is how I would like us to understand why the Bill is so important. I want to talk a little about changing the culture inside these organisations. Again, I go back to what Bishop James Jones said: we need to dismantle the patronising disposition of unaccountable power that these organisations feel entitled to exhibit. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s tenant management organisation, which was our landlord, behaved like a mini mafia. It was a non-functioning organisation that bullied and intimidated residents. Anyone who put their head above the parapet was targeted. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, whose duty it was to monitor and ensure that the TMO behaved in a proper way, failed completely in its duty to do that. As a result, as residents, as leaseholders, we were not treated with respect, and we were not treated with dignity. It is interesting to think about those words—respect and dignity—alongside the duty of candour. People need to be treated in that way. Along with the duty of public authorities, and public officers, to tell the truth, and on candour, transparency and frankness, we also need to look very carefully at their duty to instil a code of conduct and ethics, which must be signed up to by the organisations. I am a social worker. Every year, I have to renew my commitment to our code of conduct and ethics. When I was engaging with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and its officers and councillors, I was amazed at their complete lack of understanding of their role as public servants. As a social worker, if someone does not want to work with me, I have to find it inside myself to provide exactly the same service to them as to someone who does want to work with me. There can be no discrimination. At the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, if we challenged them in any way, they would come after us, as individuals. I used to feel that as a lowly social worker I understood my role as a public servant; the leader of the council at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea had no idea about those responsibilities. It is really important that, as part of this Bill, we instil a code of conduct and ethics that is meaningful, published and promoted, that is part of training, yearly appraisals and interview processes, and that is, possibly, monitored by the public advocate as well, to make sure that we try, somehow, to change the culture inside these organisations. It is not a silver bullet, because social workers have values and ethics, and things go wrong in social work. Ofsted has values and ethics and, as we heard previously, things go very wrong in Ofsted. It is not a silver bullet, but it is really important. In terms of criminal sanctions, there must be some bite behind these duties. The other thing with criminal sanctions is that cover-ups normally happen from the top down and not from the bottom up. If junior members of staff are being bullied by senior staff members to tell lies and take part in a cover-up, a criminal sanction would allow them to refer to their legal obligations not to commit a criminal offence. It would give them a way out of that. In the Grenfell Tower disaster, there were eight public bodies and 27 commercial organisations. We need to make sure that those commercial organisations, which were carrying out a public function, are also responsible for duty, candour and transparency, and that they also have to sign up to the code of ethics and values. We must ensure that they behave in the same way that the public authorities have to behave. Finally, I want to turn to how the Bill can assist in public inquiries. I briefly mentioned the “merry-go-round of buck-passing”— which was still turning: after all the evidence was given by the core participants, there was no one to blame for the fire. As bereaved and survivors, many of us attended the public inquiry and sat through months and months of this evidence. Very naively, I think we always believed that the public inquiry was the one thing that would give us the truth and allow us to leave with an understanding of why 72 people died. I always thought, “Well, these people will come and the truth will give us what we want, and it will set them free.” There were probably 200 witnesses who appeared at the public inquiry, and I can count on the fingers of one hand how many turned up and gave evidence from their heart. I sent some evidence to you—a seven-minute tape from the public inquiry, put together by Forensic Architecture, of public officials basically just saying, “I can’t remember. I can’t recall.” We had Robert Black, who was the chief executive of the TMO, responding to a question from Richard Millett, the QC of the public inquiry, by saying, “Pass”—like he was on “Mastermind”, like this was some sort of quiz that he could take part in or not take part in. I am sure you have seen Eric Pickles. Towards the end of the public inquiry, he advised Richard Millett that he should use his time very wisely, because Lord Pickles had other, more important, things to do with his time that day. That is the kind of contempt and disrespect that we were treated with during the public inquiry, and I truly believe that the Bill forces public authorities to go beyond just telling the truth in public inquiries and that it forces them to provide more in-depth information. I think it would be really helpful if public inquiries and public officials were invited at an early stage to provide position statements about their organisation. That would do one of three things. It would help to speed up the public inquiry process, it would reduce the pain and suffering of families, because the process would not take as long, and it would reduce the cost on the public purse. I thought quite hard about those things, and I hope that I have managed to communicate them in a way that was not too quick and that was understandable.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q We heard in evidence this morning about a sense that prevention of future deaths reports are made but nothing is necessarily done to follow up on them. Dr Chopra, my understanding is that it is essentially the CQC’s job to take into account anything that is of material interest in an organisation, such as a prevention of future deaths report, and that you see it as your job to follow those reports up and at least attempt to ensure that they are listened to. Dr Chopra: We get notified of incidents. To be very frank, we are a responsive organisation when incidents occur; when we are made aware of PFD reports, we look at them. Because of the way that we look at things, as I said, we are responsive rather than taking a proactive view, but yes, that is right. One thing that might be helpful is to bring those recommendations to a national body. We are pinning a lot on the National Quality Board at the moment, but it would be helpful to bring recommendations to a central place that would allow their dissemination so that they land not just in the organisation where the incident occurred but across the piece.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am the shadow Minister. Some members of the Committee had the opportunity to meet deputy heads of the security services last week. One thing they talked about was that individuals within an organisation might have one version of events that they understand, but the wider organisation has other information pertaining to that that they do not understand, so they have a perception of what might be in the public interest and what it might be reasonable to disclose as an individual, but that is not there in its entirety. Given your previous role, can you comment on what the challenges might be for the security services in managing the additional duties that this Bill will place on them? Lord Evans of Weardale: First, I should make it clear that I am a strong supporter of this Bill. I think it is very timely. It is clear that victims, members of the public, have been badly let down by public authorities over a number of years. I gave evidence to the infected blood inquiry. It is very clear that something needs to be done and I support the Bill. I support the inclusion of the intelligence services in the Bill and strongly support chapter 2, which I hope we will be able to get on to. There is as much need for the intelligence services to be accountable as there is for any other public authority. It seems to me right that they should be included in the scope of this Bill. I also recognise that there are particular circumstances that mean that the mechanism for achieving accountability and candour might need to be different. Certainly from my previous role heading the service, there are two areas that I think are of potential concern. The first and most important area is that members of the service are under existing legal constraints on what they can say. It needs to be clear how they would be able to cope with this duty of candour, which will be set against their other existing legal duty of protecting information and handling sensitive information appropriately. That needs to be resolved, and I believe that the mechanism laid out in the Bill resolves it acceptably. This is not about institutional defence of the agency or its reputation. The sort of information we are talking about is such that, for instance, its disclosure could identify a human source, which could lead to their exposure and potentially their death in the worst circumstances. It could also be information we have about an enemy or threat to the UK, whether that be a terrorist or foreign state, and if that state or terrorist group knew that we had the information, they could probably work out where we got it from. They would then be able to take steps to stop us from obtaining it in future, which would mean that we were less able to protect the country against foreign intelligence activity or terrorist planning, and therefore the ability of the agency to safeguard the country would be reduced. That is what you are trying to protect. You have already cited my second point, which I acknowledge but do not see as the key point, and it is that any individual desk officer in MI5—I think this would probably be the same in MI6 or GCHQ—may see a very small part of a picture, but, particularly for very sensitive information, the need-to-know procedures are in place. They will not necessarily understand why a particular piece of information is very sensitive, or actually what the bigger picture is. Bilaterally providing that information between an individual and an external scrutiny body brings two problems. First, the external scrutinising body may not be equipped to handle highly sensitive information, and therefore it might go astray, even with good will. Secondly, it is important that the overall understanding of the agency is disclosed to the investigating body, not just one picture or one part of it. That is why I think it makes sense for the responsibility to rest on the head of the agency. I also looked with great interest to see what pressure there was on the head of the agency to respond to this. The fact that in certain circumstances there is a criminal liability on the head of the agency struck me as being quite a strong measure, and a measure that is appropriate in the circumstances.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Professor Waters, first I want to acknowledge the circumstances that bring you here today, which is not something that any of us would want to experience. Condolences on your loss. What was your experience of applying for legal aid, and what difference did it make to you that you did not get representation? Professor Waters: It was two years ago exactly on this day that the inquest into my sister’s death started. We found out four days before the commencement of the inquest that our application for legal aid had been refused—four days. In preparation for that and the possibility that we might have to go into the inquest not represented or foot the bill ourselves, or the lawyers have to do it pro bono—why should they?—I read over 2,000 pages of disclosure evidence. It was very traumatic, as you can imagine, to read some of the details of what my sister went through and some of the medical reports and so on. That alone was traumatising. A freedom of information request recently found out that Ofsted, which is one of three public bodies—interested parties—that our family were up against, spent £68,000 on external counsel alone and could not provide us with the figures for how much it had spent in its internal legal department. Ofsted has its own legal department—but it still spent £68,000 of taxpayers’ money on external counsel. Presumably, the other interested parties, Reading borough council and Berkshire NHS trust, will have spent similar amounts of money and also have their own internal legal departments. My family, as taxpayers, were indirectly paying the legal fees of the three bodies that had done harm to my sister. That just speaks volumes on the imbalance of power in this system. It is really retraumatising that at your absolute lowest—and I really hope that no one in this room has been where I was—it is at that point that you suddenly have to navigate this entirely alien system. You do not have lessons at school on what an inquest is, where you find an inquest lawyer, what a prevention of future deaths report is, what kind of coroner you want or what kind of inquest you are going to get. But suddenly, when you are absolutely traumatised by a terrible and preventable death of a loved one, you have to find this stuff out. I am here speaking to you. I have been speaking publicly about what our family has been through and continues to go through—but for every person like me and the other witness, how many hundreds of people are there who are crushed by that system and are unable, for whatever quite legitimate reason, to stick up for themselves and inform themselves? Parity of arms is absolutely crucial and it cannot come soon enough.