On 3 November, Prime Minister Starmer told MPs that the British state failed the 97 victims of the Hillsborough disaster. The acknowledgement came after the Public Office (Accountability) Bill received its second reading in the House of Commons.
It will now pass through the committee stage before its third reading. On 13 November, the House of Lords is also set to hold a short debate on the bill’s progress.
Hillsborough — Long overdue
In May of last year, before the general election, the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) issued a report titled Human rights and the proposal for a ‘Hillsborough Law’. It echoed calls for a ‘Hillsborough Law’ to hold the state accountable for deaths that it causes. The JCHR stated that such a law should include:
- A ‘duty of candour’, obliging the state to tell the truth in the aftermath of such disasters.
- A statutory guarantee of financial aid for the families who lost loved ones, to help them take part in inquests and inquiries.
- A standing public advocate to support people through the proceedings following state-related disasters.
Labour’s 2024 manifesto committed the party to the creation of a Hillsborough Law. Starmer then reiterated that promise at his 2024 party conference. Labour finally followed through on that commitment when they introduced the Public Office (Accountability) Bill on 16 September 2025.
Addressing MPs on Tuesday following the second reading, Starmer said:
I want to begin this debate with a simple acknowledgement, long overdue, that the British state failed the families and victims of Hillsborough to an almost inhuman level.
Those victims and their families, their strength, their courage, their refusal to give up, a determination no matter what was thrown at them to fight for people they’ll never know or meet, to make sure that they never go through something like this again.
They are the reason we stand here today with this Bill.
They are the reason why it will be known as the Hillsborough Law, and they are the reason why we say clearly again, what should have been said immediately, that their loved ones were unlawfully killed, and that they never bore any responsibility for what happened in Sheffield that day. We say it at this despatch box today.
‘Duty of candour’
Whilst it was created in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, the Accountability Bill would also apply to state cover-ups like the Grenfell disaster and the Horizon scandal. As it stands, the bill will enforce five key duties for the government:
- It imposes a statutory duty of “candour and assistance”. This means that public authorities will have a legal obligation to be transparent in investigations of state-related deaths.
- It creates mandatory codes of conduct as part of a framework of ethical conduct for public authorities.
- It makes misleading the public and failing to uphold that duty of candour a new form of criminal offence.
- It replaces the common law offence of misconduct in public office with two more-serious statutory offences.
- Finally, it creates “parity of representation”, nominally giving bereaved families equal access to legal council to match the state during inquests.
Starmer went on in his address to the House of Commons:
We often call Hillsborough a tragedy, but it’s more than a tragedy, because the disaster was not down to chance, it was not an accident.
It was an injustice, and then further injustice piled on top when the state subjected those families to endure from the police lies and smears against their loved ones while the central state, the government, aided and abetted them for years and years and years.
A cover-up by the very institutions that are supposed to protect and to serve. It is nothing less than a stain of modern history of this country. […]
We should also be blunt that there’s a pattern common to all these scandals that time and again, the British state struggles to recognise injustice because of who the victims are – because they’re working-class, because they’re black, because they’re women and girls.
That is the injustice that this Bill seeks to correct.
Ringing hollow
However, Starmer’s fine words about candour and accountability are likely to ring hollow for many. The prime minister has a longstanding relationship with the Sun, which smeared victims after the Hillsborough disaster, leading to a boycott of the paper by the city of Liverpool. Despite all this, Starmer has written for the rag and employed one of its former editors, David Dinsmore, as his communications advisor.
Likewise, as the Canary’s Ed Sykes reported:
Meanwhile, there’s still no resolution to the massive Spycops political policing scandal. For decades, secretive police units used undercover officers to infiltrate activist organisations. Police targeted “around 1,000 campaigning and left wing groups”, only three of which were “‘a legitimate target’ for undercover policing of any kind”. And there have been constant delays in the search for justice, making it “one of the longest public inquiries in UK history”.
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill will only apply to future disasters. Meanwhile, victims of the Spycops scandal and other government cover-ups will take cold comfort in Starmer’s promise that the government won’t lie the next time it tries to get away with murder — honest.
