New Hillsborough Law holds official lies to account – with 1 exception | Politics | News

A crazy incident took place in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening. But before we get to the madness, let me celebrate the clever work. After decades of fighting, the Hillsborough families won in the House of Commons. The Public Office (Liability) Bill, also known as the Hillsborough Bill, has passed the elected Parliament.

This creates a statutory Duty of Honesty and the new offense of Misleading the Public: Willfully or recklessly deceiving the public will attract a prison sentence of up to two years. It will apply to the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, all government ministers, NHS workers, the police, civil servants, the military and almost every powerful official in the country.

It will even apply to our security services. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ fought for a solution and the families defeated them. Since June 2016, I have been working to make lying in politics a crime. I sued Boris Johnson in 2019 to try to achieve this by precedent. I have never believed that Parliament itself could be trusted to deliver this.

The Hillsborough campaign proved me wrong. Their success is the success of the suffragettes and they too deserve a statue in Parliament Square. They are heroes. This victory belongs to them. But there is a gap in this vital work, and it is shaped exactly like the people who voted for it.

The offense of misleading the public 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 by law that the only powerful authorities who can be legally free to deliberately or recklessly deceive the public are those who make our laws and enforce them in court.

There is no constitutional principle behind this. This is a childish level of self-awareness and, predictably, deplorable enough to damage the reputation of Parliament itself. Now real spies will face criminal consequences for deceiving the public before their own MPs. All night long, MPs stood up and demanded that this law contain no exceptions.

MP Emma Lewell celebrated “no deviation from the Duty of Integrity for the intelligence and security services”: “The rest of us face reprisals for not telling the truth. We should at least expect that from the state.” MP Nadia Whittome said it was “vital that there is no exemption from the duty of candor”. MP Sarah Russell said a “major overhaul” of security services would be “completely unsustainable and unreasonable”.

Each of these demands came from reserve MPs, and the blame does not apply to any of them. They demanded that they not vote for anyone other than themselves. And every other legislator in the UK. Moreover, all the judges.

I first became aware of this exemption in September last year and have since worked full time to prevent Parliament from making this huge mistake. Thanks to Luke Myer MP and Jennifer Nadel of Compassion in Politics, amendments have been tabled to add MPs and Lords to the blame, with parliamentary privilege fully retained. 35 MPs from Labour, Greens, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Plaid Cymru and independents backed them.

These changes were never even voted on. I was not defeated. I’ve never encountered it. The government and the Speaker of the Parliament did not allow enough time because the MPs spent the night repeating each other. We are constantly analyzing the players at this summer’s World Cup: possession, shots on target, passes, assists. We must do the same for MPs.

I watched Tuesday’s debate live and then did a full analysis of the official record. Less than half of the 27,997 words spoken during the reporting phase were about any change. More than half of the restated points the House has already heard. Three of the 34 non-government amendments were voted on.

And the amendments that would apply this law to MPs received 322 words: 1.2% of the debate. This number accurately measures the Parliament’s self-awareness. When asked whether people who write integrity legislation should live by it, the House of Commons gave 1.2% of its attention to the question and zero votes.

They don’t even look. Recognizing families is vital, and Tuesday’s accolades were well-deserved. But the same praise, repeated over and over again, is becoming less about families and more about MPs and their social media clips. There is a report phase to analyze the changes, discuss them and vote on them as much as possible; otherwise most MPs have no real idea what they are voting for.

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

Why this rush? Sir Keir Starmer apparently wanted the Hillsborough Act to be applied to his legacy before he leaves office. Campaigners were told the bill would not arrive until the end of the summer; Conservative Dr. Kieran Mullan said he came back with less than 24 hours notice; “absolutely unacceptable”; The SNP’s Seamus Logan said “inappropriate haste… is actively working against proper parliamentary scrutiny”. This served one man’s record and even cost Parliament the chance to vote to hold him to his own standards.

Still, I finish with hope. For months, much of the media mindlessly repeated the story that the security services were fragmented, but little mentioned that lawmakers were also fragmented. This question is now resolved. Flashing lights may appear. It’s time to look at the bill as a whole and ask: Why does this law apply to almost every public servant in Britain other than legislators?

I will be campaigning in the House of Lords to fix this stupid mistake. If you fix it, this law will turn into the great victory story it deserves. If you fail, the only truth that will be visible to everyone on the day it becomes law will be overshadowed: Those who did this saw fit to apply it to everyone but themselves.

The Hillsborough Act should apply to the people who made it. I will fight to ensure this.

Marcus J Ball is a law reform advocate and founder of ExecProsec.