Doing the right thing after state failures - Ian Murray
No one serving the public should hide the truth, but on far too many occasions in the last few decades, public officials and bodies have fallen far short of the ideals of public service and the state has completely failed those it is charged with protecting.
The Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and the subsequent cover-up will forever be a stain on our national conscience. The Hillsborough Law sets out to prevent any such cover-up from ever happening again.
The bill, formally known as the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, was announced in last year’s King’s Speech and unveiled by the new Justice Secretary, David Lammy, this week.
It will introduce a legal and professional duty of candour on public officials and bodies, legally requiring them to act with honesty and integrity, with new criminal sanctions for egregious breaches.
In England and Wales (justice is devolved), it will introduce new offences for misconduct in public office and new support for victims and families in pursuing justice when failed by public institutions.
This was a commitment made in our manifesto and a commitment now met in government. It was also a personal promise of the Prime Minister to the families of the 97 Liverpool fans who died in the 1989 disaster. He met with some of them in Downing Street this week following the news of the bill’s introduction.
This is their achievement and theirs alone. Their tireless campaigning over many decades has led to this moment. For years, their loved ones were subject to lies and derision in the media and they were met with deceit and defensiveness from the very institutions that are supposed to keep us all safe. It took until 2016 for inquests to conclude that the fans had been unlawfully killed.
While the shorthand name for the bill is a tribute to the victims of the Hillsborough disaster and their families, this is sadly far from the only enormous injustice to emerge from a failure of the state in the last few decades.
Think of the horror of the Grenfell fire, the victims of the infected blood scandal, and the Kafkaesque Horizon IT scandal which saw sub-postmasters sent to prison for errors caused by a faulty computer system.
We must take steps to ensure that justice is served for those affected by these failures. Over £1 billion has now been paid out to over 7300 postmasters affected by the Horizon IT scandal. Financial redress for the victims of the scandal has more than quadrupled under this Labour government, delivering on a key manifesto commitment.
In July, the Government announced an inquiry into the violent clashes between police and picketers at Orgreave 41 years ago, delivering on another manifesto commitment, while in June the Prime Minister announced a separate inquiry in England and Wales into grooming gangs following Baroness Casey’s audit earlier in the year.
These terrible injustices cast a long shadow over our communities. They erode trust in public officials and undermine confidence in our institutions. For many of the victims and their families, justice has sadly come too late. But with the Hillsborough Law, we can make sure that such injustices never happen again.