The Public Office (Accountability) Bill is also known as the Hillsborough Law, in memory of the 97 Liverpool FC fans who died at Hillsborough Stadium in 1989, and whose families spent decades fighting for justice amid cover-ups and blame-shifting.
The Bill, drafted by Elkan Abrahamson, director at Broudie Jackson Canter, and Pete Weatherby KC, Garden Court North Chambers, was first presented to Parliament in 2017 but dropped due to the general election.
Abrahamson said the Bill’s introduction this week is ‘a momentous step’ that ‘will transform the face of British justice’.
It requires public bodies, including the police, to proactively cooperate with investigations and inquiries or face criminal penalties for non-compliance.
Bereaved families will be given access to non-means-tested legal aid at all inquests where a public body is involved, with the costs covered by the public body represented. Public bodies will be under a legal duty to ensure their spend is proportionate, stopping public bodies from hiring unjustifiably large legal teams at inquests.
The Bill also creates an offence of misleading the public in a seriously improper way, with criminal sanctions for the most egregious breaches.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer KC said: ‘Make no mistake—this a law for the 97, but it is also a law for the sub-postmasters who suffered because of the Horizon scandal, the victims of infected blood, and those who died in the terrible Grenfell Tower fire.’
Deborah Coles, director at INQUEST and Hillsborough Law Now, said the Bill was ‘a landmark step.
‘We have witnessed decades of institutional defensiveness and cruelty designed to evade scrutiny and accountability. We must now ensure the Hillsborough Law is delivered in full and those with vested interests to oppose it are resisted.’
It was not until 2016 that the Hillsborough inquests ruled the 97 were unlawfully killed—families campaigned to have the case reopened after a first inquest concluded ‘accidental death’ in 1991. Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry, in 1990, concluded policing ‘broke down’. In 2012, the Hillsborough Independent Panel found police altered witness statements and tried to smear the victims.
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