The government's Hillsborough Law promises every public servant the same duty to tell an inquiry the truth. Its own clause lets an intelligence chief withhold that evidence through an existing national security process instead.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. The Ministry of Justice's GOV.UK page for the Hillsborough Law Bill says it "places a new legal duty on public servants to act truthfully and fully support investigations into the state" [1], and its own Duty of Candour fact sheet calls that duty applicable to "public bodies and officials" generally, "backed by criminal sanctions" [2]. The bill itself, now at committee stage in the House of Lords, routes that duty differently for staff at the intelligence services, Defence Intelligence, the National Crime Agency and counter-terrorism police: they report up to their own service head, whose own duty to pass the evidence to an inquiry falls away if a disclosure-restriction application is made or a minister seeks to convert the inquiry [3]. One documented mistake: four stars.
The Hillsborough Law Bill's own fact sheet does not flinch from naming what it is for. At the Hillsborough inquest, it says, police officers lied and changed witness statements to protect reputations; bereaved families fought a 25-year battle for an inquest to reach the right conclusion while public bodies appointed multiple legal teams against them; investigations were undermined "by a lack of a duty of candour" [2]. It names Grenfell Tower, the infected blood scandal and the Post Office Horizon scandal as the same pattern repeating [2]. Formally the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, it was introduced in the Commons on 16 September 2025, passed third reading on 14 July 2026 and arrived in the House of Lords as HL Bill 42 two days later [1] [3]. Parliament's own record shows it still at committee stage in the Lords, with sittings on 12, 19 and 21 October 2026, and not yet law [4].
One duty, described as universal
The GOV.UK policy page, last updated 21 October 2026, describes the bill's central measure in a single unqualified sentence: it "places a new legal duty on public servants to act truthfully and fully support investigations into the state, ensuring wrongdoing is not concealed and delivering justice for victims" [1]. The dedicated Duty of Candour fact sheet, one of nine supporting documents linked from that page, goes further: the duty "establishes new obligations on public bodies and officials to help investigations to find the truth: providing information and evidence with candour; proactively; and without favouring their own position", and applies to "statutory inquiries and coroner's investigations", to non-statutory inquiries, and can be extended further by ministers [2]. Neither document mentions the intelligence services, the National Crime Agency, counter-terrorism policing or any carve-out for them. Searching the full text of the fact sheet for any of those terms returns nothing.
What clause 6 actually does
The bill itself, as brought from the Commons to the Lords, sets out the general duty at clause 2: public authorities and public officials "must at all times act with candour, transparency and frankness in their dealings with inquiries and investigations", including a duty to notify an inquiry where they have information relevant to it [3]. Clause 6, headed "Protected information", then modifies how that duty applies to what it defines as a "relevant public authority": the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service, the Government Communications Headquarters, Defence Intelligence, the National Crime Agency, and police forces exercising counter-terrorism functions [3].
Under clause 6(2), the obligation on an individual to notify an inquiry directly "does not apply" to a person who works for one of those bodies, unless that person is the head of the service acting on its behalf [3]. Clause 6(2C) requires that individual to give the information to the head of their service instead [3]. Clause 6(2D) then requires the head to pass that information on to the inquiry [3], but clause 6(2E) removes that duty "if, or to the extent that," either of two conditions is met first [3]. The first, at clause 6(2F), is that an application has been made under any enactment or rule of law for the information to be subject to restrictions on disclosure, of the kind used for public interest immunity claims [3]. The second, at clause 6(2G), is that representations have been made to a minister asking for the inquiry to be converted into a statutory inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 [3]. Clause 6(2I) goes further still: if a minister receiving such representations asks the person leading the inquiry to suspend it, on the ground that the matter is likely to be adequately investigated by that statutory inquiry instead, the person leading it "must" do so [3].
The government's own explanatory notes to the bill describe the same mechanism in plain terms, without the word "exemption" ever appearing: an intelligence officer's duty is satisfied by telling their head, and the head's own duty to forward that information "does not apply where either of two conditions are met", the first being a public interest immunity-style application and the second a ministerial request to convert the inquiry [5]. Where a public interest immunity-style application is made, the notes confirm information need only be provided "to the extent required to enable the application to be determined", not to the inquiry at large [5].
Credit where due
The bill does a great deal that the fact sheet claims for it without qualification. It creates a new offence of misleading the public, aimed squarely at the kind of conduct the Taylor Inquiry found at Hillsborough, where police falsely blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster [2]. It replaces the common law offence of misconduct in public office with a statutory one carrying prison sentences [2]. It requires every public body to set out a professional duty of candour for staff, built on the Nolan Principles, with disciplinary consequences for non-compliance [2]. None of that is undermined by the finding above, and the carve-out itself is not evidence of bad faith: routing an intelligence officer's evidence through their service head, rather than requiring junior staff to disclose sensitive sources and methods directly, is a recognisable and explicable safeguard. The mistake is narrower than the mechanism: a policy page and a fact sheet written to explain this bill to the public describe one duty that applies to everyone, and say nothing about the different, conditional route that applies to the services most often at the centre of exactly the kind of inquiry this bill exists to fix.
The claim, tested
| The claim | What the evidence shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| The bill "places a new legal duty on public servants to act truthfully and fully support investigations into the state" (GOV.UK policy page) [1], applying to "public bodies and officials" generally (Duty of Candour fact sheet) [2] | Clause 6 of the bill, and paragraphs 76 to 89 of its own explanatory notes, show a different route for intelligence services, Defence Intelligence, the National Crime Agency and counter-terrorism police: individual staff report to their service head, not the inquiry, and the head's own duty to pass the information on lapses if a disclosure-restriction application is made or a minister seeks to convert the inquiry [3] [5] | The duty described to the public as universal is, for the services most likely to face a Hillsborough-scale inquiry, conditional and chief-gated |
One documented mistake. The Hillsborough Law Bill's GOV.UK policy page and its own Duty of Candour fact sheet describe a single legal duty of candour applying to public servants without qualification. The bill's own clause 6, and the government's explanatory notes to it, set out a materially different mechanism for intelligence services, Defence Intelligence, the National Crime Agency and counter-terrorism police: individual staff report to their own service head rather than the inquiry directly, and the head's duty to forward that evidence does not apply if a disclosure-restriction application is made or a minister asks for the inquiry to be converted into a statutory one. Neither public-facing document mentions this. Rated four stars out of five.
Sources
- Hillsborough Law Bill (GOV.UK policy paper, Ministry of Justice, published 16 September 2025, last updated 21 October 2026)
- Public Office (Accountability) Bill: Duty of Candour measures fact sheet (Ministry of Justice, PDF)
- HL Bill 42: Public Office (Accountability) Bill, as brought from the House of Commons, 16 July 2026 (UK Parliament Bills API)
- Public Office (Accountability) Bill, bill 4019: current stage (UK Parliament Bills API; the human-readable bills.parliament.uk page returned a Cloudflare bot challenge on direct fetch, so this data endpoint is cited directly)
- HL Bill 42: Public Office (Accountability) Bill, Explanatory Notes (UK Parliament Bills API)