---

Public Office (Accountability) Bill

My Lords, I too warmly welcome the Bill and pay tribute to all those who fought so hard to achieve it. If I may immediately pick up the point just made so forcefully by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford: how are we going to make the change envisaged by the Bill effective? It is undoubtedly necessary, but not yet in itself sufficient. Although this is indeed a milestone, we are not yet at the destination that everybody wishes to see of deep cultural change. How are we going to get there? I would like to confine myself to just two aspects of this challenge: one is public inquiries and the other is how to make the duty of candour effective.

Astonishingly, we have no fewer than 26 public inquiries currently going on in this country. But as the Institute for Government report of December 2025 pointed out, that system of public inquiries is itself suffering from “systemic problems”, including cost, delay and failure to deliver change. As your Lordships’ own Statutory Inquiries Committee reported in 2024, in particular there is a failure to follow up on public inquiry recommendations, and that means that avoidable mistakes are constantly repeated. Therefore, I agree with the Institute for Government, which suggests that this Bill is a first step in the reform of our public inquiry system. There should be a clear system of consistently following up on inquiry recommendations, including by a committee of both Houses—or, failing that, a committee of this House—so that everyone is clear what steps are being taken to avert future tragedy. In particular, if recommendations are not implemented, why not?

I turn to the second aspect: how do we make the duty of candour effective? It is all very well to pass a Bill and to threaten a criminal prosecution, but how are we actually going to change the culture? In the debate in the other House, the right honourable Sir Jeremy Hunt lamented that he himself introduced into the NHS a duty of candour more than 10 years ago. He pointed out that that change in itself has had very little effect: we have still seen a series of national health scandals, with the Nottingham maternity scandal being only one of a number of examples. Similarly, there is already a statutory duty of candour on the police, but incidents such as the recent Maccabi incident in Birmingham do not suggest that that duty of candour is yet particularly effective. As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, pointed out, just having codes is not enough; we already have plenty of codes. What are we going to do about this?

I suggest that changing the culture will be a matter of leadership, as many of your Lordships have pointed out, but it will not be easy, in particular—as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, reminded us—as we are dealing with the complexities of human nature. Loyalty to one’s institution, hope, fear of losing one’s job, and the inability to accept that one is oneself at fault are all factors that play into the problem we are addressing.

I have no immediate answer, just one or two questions. Should we build into the system not only the threat of a criminal prosecution but some better reward and recognition that integrity, truthfulness and honesty are very much the right thing to do, so people start to

think that they will get the pat on the back, as it were, and public approbation? As well as a duty of candour, a duty of praise, if you like, is the other side of the coin. Does our own system discourage candour? Has our culture of blame gone too far? Is our system too adversarial? Are we trying to pillory people when we should be trying to learn lessons for the future? All these are very important questions.

I fear that a criminal prosecution, or some criminal prosecutions, may indeed be necessary in order to make the point. Just passing the Bill, in itself, while very necessary, will not quite get us there; a great deal of thought needs to go into how we manage the psychology of this situation. I suggest that, to ensure that the Bill actually brings about change, and to monitor progress, a committee of this House should undertake post-legislative scrutiny not more than three years after Royal Assent, so that we get a good view of what is going on and we continue to chase and pursue the very important change that is necessary. This is a very good Bill, but whether it turns out to be a great Bill depends on the follow-through in which the Government and Parliament, and in particular this House, have a crucial role to play.

7.34 pm