09/07/2025
You may have heard about the Hillsborough Law.
"What is it?" you may ask amongst other things.
Here's a thread below to try to answer all your questions.
The Hillsborough Law is a piece of legislation that carries two main parts.
A statutory Duty of Candour on Public Authorities and officials and equality of arms for legal representation at Inquests, Inquiries and other similar processes.
So what is a Duty of Candour?
Basically it means if you are a public authority or work for one, you have to tell the truth at all times, and in particular when things go wrong and there are investigations.
You'd think that may exist already right?
Wrong.
That's why cover ups such as Hillsborough, Infected Blood, the Post Office scandal, etc are quite so common in the UK.
The Hillsborough Law has a statutory Duty of Candour backed up by criminal sanctions for serious breaches.
Basically don't cover up the state injuring or killing people else you may go to jail.
And the criminal sanctions part is really important as it changes the risk/reward dynamic of choosing to cover something up.
A duty of candour will only work in practice if there is the risk relevant officials will be prosecuted if they intentionally or recklessly choose to mislead the public or official investigations.
That’s shown by the current ‘professional’ duty of candour that applies in the NHS.
It hasn't stopped cover ups of maternity failings for example or the shredding of documents.
But if your decision making is based on the law expressly requiring you to tell the truth and not cover-up failure and wrongdoing, with the backstop of jail if you don’t, then it's likely you aren't going to risk prison.
That's the cultural change that's needed.
But what about the "white lie" challenge highlighted in a Times article?
Frankly, it's a nonsensical challenge.
The argument goes, what if a Civil Servant lies about being late, doesn't that risk them becoming a criminal?
No. No it doesn't. Because that would be stupid.
Instead what would happen is that would very clearly be an employment matter.
That's because of clause 3(2)(a) of the 2017 act Andy Burnham introduced to parliament.
That clause reads it is an offence if someone "intentionally or recklessly misleads the generals public of media": that is contravenes the general duty of candour.
Further safeguards are in clauses 3(2)(b) and 3(2)(c), but relate to official investigations: the secondary duty in 1(2). The secondary duty contains provisions to ensure that the duty of candour is practical and effective in such investigations.
But what about national security? Surely we can't risk the defence of the realm by declaring things out in the open which would not be safe to do so?
No. Obviously not. Luckily those who drafted Hillsborough Law thought of that!
Clause 1(5)(a) highlights it is to be read subject to existing laws relating to national security.
The point is things that *can* be on the open should be honest.
Things that *can't* be open should still be honest but to people with the relevant clearance.
Hillsborough Law does not affect whether it is in the public interest to publish: it just requires that what is stated in public or private must be the truth.
So that's Duty Of Candour covered off in basic terms and that is the bit of Hillsborough Law getting most of the attention and focus at the minute.
The proposed duty of candour has been carefully crafted to be practical and effective.
It is designed to encourage a change of culture.
It would achieve swifter and fairer justice for individuals and families, and it would save huge amounts of public money because it would prevent cover-ups and slash the length of official investigations and inquiries.
The second strand at the minute is on what is sometimes called parity or equality of arms.
This is about rebalancing the playing field for legal representation for impacted families and the state in cases where the state may have caused or contributed to the deaths or injuries.
Rebalancing representation ensures fairness for individuals affected by state failures, and prevents them being out-gunned by lawyers paid for by the taxpayer to protect the reputations of institutions.
At the minute what happens is families go into an Inquest, often on there own because there is such limited funding for legal representation. The lucky ones may have a pro-bono lawyer.
The state meanwhile has a whole team of lawyers.
Rebalancing means the same resources should be split between those affected and the state bodies involved in proportion to the work involved. It does not involve extra public spending.
Doesn't that sound much fairer? Do you want your tax pounds spent on lawyering up public institutions to bully families who have suffered a loss, or should families get a proportionate slice to allow them to have expert legal assistance to ensure they get a fair deal?
Finally here's the most misunderstood bit of Hillsborough Law.
The position statement.
A position statement requires a public authority to set out it's narrative of what did and did not happen and what went wrong following an incident or disaster at the outset of an official investigation.
Currently that doesn't happen, the state waits and instructs its lawyers to see what it can get away with. It leads to obfuscation and we get a lot of "I can't remember guv, honest".
Position statements help fix this.
Also - it's another tool that saves money!
Where it's been used before it has sped up massively the wheels of very expensive legal processes, such as the UEFA investigation into the near disaster at Paris for a champions league final.
