Hillsborough disaster and early campaigns
In the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and the resulting investigations over subsequent decades, grieving families of the 96 individuals who died called for a duty of candour, forcing public officials to tell the truth. Not only was the disaster in Hillsborough caused by police inaction and misconduct, but a campaign of covering up information, falsifying records and slandering in particular football fans of Liverpool Football Club in attendance, led families of the victims to campaign for a duty of candour, that an event and the subsequent ordeal to get the truth out would never happen again.
Pete Weatherby KC, who represented the families of the 96 through the Hillsborough Inquiry, believed that not only a duty of candour was needed, but also a duty to assist: to force officials to proactively supply information to inquiries. The families also had to raise funds totalling £63 million, [2] which was eventually partially funded by the Home Office through a unique fund. The authorities had access to state-funded legal representation throughout court cases and inquiries; Weatherby's argument being that there is an imbalance for those pleading injustice against the state, with its effectively limitless funds to pay for legal representation. Weatherby, along with other barristers who represented family members of the 96, penned a draft of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which enshrined the full duty of candour and equal funding. The bill was brought to parliament in 2017 as a private member's bill by then-MP Andy Burnham and had cross-party support, but it did not reach its second reading before the 2017 general election, after which Burnham left the Commons; subsequent Conservative governments did not pick the legislation up again.
More injustices, mounting pressure
The late 2010s and early 2020s saw a number of scandals and injustices involving public institutions and officials; particularly the Post Office scandal which saw hundreds of innocent subpostmasters privately prosecuted by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015 for theft, that turned out to be a software fault; the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, which led to the deaths of 72 residents, caused by substandard cladding. Others include the Infected blood scandal and the Nuclear test veterans scandal, all of which have had campaigns for compensation to victims.
A duty of candour bill was announced in the 2024 King's Speech following the Labour Party's general election victory, later clarified in the transcript of the speech as a Hillsborough Law. [3]
In July 2025 Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, attempted to reintroduce the original 2017 bill, introduced by Burnham, to parliament, due to fears that the duty of candour element of the original bill had been removed. This attempt was blocked by the government, who are said to want to draft their own version of the bill. [4]
