Public Office (Accountability) Bill

The Public Office (Accountability) Bill was announced in the 13 May 2026 King's Speech as one of 27 bills in the government's legislative programme. Described in official briefing notes as a 'Hillsborough Law' measure, it would create a statutory duty of candour on senior public officials — requiring them to provide accurate information in inquiries, legal proceedings, and public-safety contexts, with criminal sanction for deliberate obfuscation. The campaign for such a law has been driven largely by survivors and bereaved families from the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, who spent three decades confronting institutional cover-ups by South Yorkshire Police and the Football Association.

The concept predates the current government. The 2021 Hillsborough Law Now campaign, backed by the Bishop of Liverpool and supported across parties, drafted model legislation that required a 'duty of candour' for all public authorities and officials. Private members' bills along the same lines were introduced in 2022 and 2023 but ran out of parliamentary time. The 2024 Labour manifesto committed to legislating on this. The bill was also long-trailed by the outcomes of the 2022 Stuart-Smith Inquiry, which found that the cover-up had been sustained for 23 years.

The bill's scope at the King's Speech was confirmed to cover senior public officials but the exact definition of 'senior official' and the criminal threshold — negligent versus deliberate conduct — had not been published. Those definitional choices will determine whether the bill merely formalises existing duties or creates genuine new criminal exposure for ministers and permanent secretaries.