𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Something insane happened in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening. But before I get to the insanity, let me celebrate what was done brilliantly. After decades of fighting, the Hillsborough families have won in the Commons. The Public Office (Accountability) Bill, AKA the Hillsborough Law, has passed the elected House.

It creates a legal Duty of Candour and a new criminal offence of Misleading the Public: intentionally or recklessly deceiving the public will carry up to two years in prison. It will apply to the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, all government ministers, NHS workers, the police, civil servants, the military and almost every other powerful official in the country.

It will even apply to our security services. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ fought for a carve-out, and the families beat them. Since June 2016, I have worked to establish lying in politics as a criminal offence. I prosecuted Boris Johnson in 2019 to try to achieve it through case precedent. I never believed Parliament itself could be trusted to deliver it.

The Hillsborough campaign proved me wrong. Their achievement belongs alongside the suffragettes’, and they too deserve a statue in Parliament Square. They are heroes. This victory is theirs. But there is a hole in this vital work, and it is shaped exactly like the people who voted it through.

The Misleading the Public offence will not apply to MPs, the House of Lords, the Senedd, the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly or judges. Parliament has told the country, in statute, that the only powerful officials who may remain legally free to intentionally or recklessly deceive the public are those who make our laws and those who administer them in court.

There is no constitutional principle behind that. It is a childish level of self-unawareness, so predictably damaging to Parliament’s own reputation that it is simply pathetic. Literal spies will now face criminal consequences for deceiving the public before their own lawmakers do. All night, MP after MP stood up and demanded that this law contain no exceptions.

Emma Lewell MP celebrated “no carve-out from the Duty of Candour for the intelligence and security services”: “The rest of us face reprisals for not telling the truth. At the very least, we should expect that from the state.” Nadia Whittome MP said it was “vital there is no exemption from the duty of candour”. Sarah Russell MP said giving the security services “a huge carve-out” would be “completely unsustainable and unreasonable”.

Every one of those demands came from backbench MPs, and the offence does not apply to a single one of them. They demanded no carve-outs for anyone – apart from themselves. And every other legislator in the UK. And all judges, on top of that.

I first noticed this exemption in September last year and have worked full time ever since to stop Parliament making this massive mistake. Thanks to Luke Myer MP and Jennifer Nadel of Compassion in Politics, amendments were tabled to add MPs and Lords to the offence, with parliamentary privilege fully protected. Thirty-five MPs from Labour, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the independents backed them.

Those amendments were never even voted on. Not defeated. Never faced. The government and the Speaker did not allow enough time, because MPs spent the evening repeating one another. At this summer’s World Cup we analyse footballers relentlessly: possession, shots on target, passes, assists. We should do the same for MPs.

I watched Tuesday’s debate live, then ran a full analysis of the official record. Of 27,997 words spoken at report stage, less than half were about any amendment at all. More than half restated points the House had already heard. Of 34 non-government amendments, three were voted on.

And the amendments that would have applied this law to MPs themselves received 322 words: 1.2% of the debate. That number measures Parliament’s self-awareness precisely. Asked whether the people writing an honesty law should live under it, the Commons gave the question 1.2% of its attention and zero votes.

They are not even looking at it. Recognising the families is vital, and Tuesday’s tributes were earned. But repeated endlessly, the same tribute stops being about the families and starts being about MPs and their social media clips. Report stage exists to analyse amendments, argue over them and vote on as many as possible – otherwise most MPs have no real idea what they are voting on.

Napoleon warned that “the greatest danger occurs at the moment of victory”. Pride makes you feel untouchable, and in the celebration you lose sight of the threat still on the field. Tuesday proved him right. The Commons was so busy congratulating itself that it never noticed the damage it was doing to itself.

Why the rush? It appears Sir Keir Starmer wanted the Hillsborough Law on his legacy before leaving office. Campaigners were told the Bill would not return until after summer; it came back with less than 24 hours’ notice – “simply unacceptable”, said Conservative Dr Kieran Mullan; “indecent haste… actively working against proper parliamentary scrutiny”, said the SNP’s Seamus Logan. It served one man’s record, and it cost Parliament the chance to even vote on holding itself to its own standard.

Yet I finish with hope. For months much of the media has mindlessly repeated the security services carve-out story while barely mentioning that the lawmakers are carved out too. That question is now settled. The blinkers can come off. Time to look at the whole Bill and ask: why does this law apply to nearly every public official in Britain except the lawmakers themselves?

I will campaign in the House of Lords to solve this stupid mistake. Fix it, and this law becomes the great victory story it deserves to be. Fail, and the day it becomes law will be marred by the one truth everyone will see: the people who made it saw fit to apply it to everyone apart from themselves.

The Hillsborough Law must apply to the people making it. I will fight to ensure that it does.

Marcus J Ball is a law reform campaigner and founder of ExecProsec