The Public Office (Accountability) Bill — universally known as the Hillsborough Law — passed its second reading in the House of Lords on 1 September 2026. The Bill now moves to Committee of the Whole House, where peers will scrutinise it clause by clause; no Committee date had been set as of 2 September 2026.

What the Bill would actually do

As set out by Justice Minister Lord Lemos opening the debate, the Bill’s core measures are:

• A statutory duty of candour and assistance, requiring public authorities and officials to act transparently and disclose relevant information proactively during specified inquiries, inquests and investigations. Intentional or reckless failure to comply, where it impedes an investigation, would become a criminal offence carrying up to two years’ imprisonment.
• A requirement on public authorities to maintain ethical conduct codes grounded in the seven Nolan principles, covering misconduct reporting and protected disclosures.
• A new offence of misleading the public, applying to serious conduct meeting the Bill’s statutory tests.
• Replacement of the common-law offence of misconduct in public office with new statutory offences.
• Parity of legal representation at inquests — greater access to publicly funded legal assistance for bereaved families where public authorities are involved, alongside a requirement for public bodies to justify their own legal spend.

Where peers agreed, and where the debate got harder

There was no disagreement in the debate about the underlying principle. Peers across parties — including the Lord Bishop of Manchester, Lord Beamish and Baroness Chakrabarti — backed the duty of candour itself, drawing on Hillsborough, Windrush, infected blood, Grenfell and the Post Office Horizon scandal as the pattern the Bill is designed to break.

The harder questions were about mechanism, not principle:

Will legislation alone change culture? Lord Bichard and Lord Barber of Chittlehampton both argued that codes and sanctions already exist across public services, yet failures still happen — the real test is whether officials’ ultimate loyalty shifts from institutional reputation to the public. Lord Lemos confirmed statutory guidance is being developed with the Ethics and Integrity Commission and the Cabinet Office.

Whistleblower protection was raised repeatedly, including by Baroness Hamwee and Lord Wills, as the piece needed before an inquiry becomes necessary. The Government’s position at second reading was that the Bill’s ethical-code provisions already address this, alongside a forthcoming separate consultation on whistleblower protection across public and private sectors.

The Independent Public Advocate (IPA) does not feature in the Bill. Baroness May of Maidenhead said she was disappointed by this, and the point was echoed by several peers. Lord Lemos said the Government supports the IPA’s role but did not commit to including it in the Bill.

National security scrutiny was mixed rather than uniformly critical: former MI5 director-general Baroness Manningham-Buller said, after examining the mechanisms, that she believed the safeguards for national-security material were adequate — while Baroness May and Lord Keen of Elie both pressed for closer examination of how the duty would interact with classified material.

Scope and drafting questions remain open — how far duties extend down subcontracting chains, whether the new offences are precisely enough worded, and how records (particularly police records) are preserved for future scrutiny. Lord Lemos said he would respond to these in writing and return to them at Committee.

What happens next

The Bill was read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House — its next substantive stage in the Lords, where amendments can be tabled. No Committee date is confirmed yet. Lord Lemos committed to writing to peers on the unresolved points before that stage begins.

Why this belongs in an operational conversation, not just a legal one

Whatever form the duty of candour ultimately takes, the debate keeps returning to the same operational question: can an organisation actually produce a reliable, contemporaneous account of what was known, who acted, and when? That’s not a legal drafting problem — it’s a record-keeping one, and it’s one control rooms and safety teams are already living with, Bill or no Bill.

If you want to see where your own operation’s record-keeping stands against that kind of scrutiny, our free Incident Response Assessment takes a few minutes and asks nothing of you upfront.

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