Public Inquiry Reform
The Covid-19 Inquiry has revealed serious flaws in how public inquiries work. Without reform, victims of the state risk being denied truth, accountability, and meaningful change.
The Hillsborough Law
We have joined the Hillsborough Families in the fight for a Hillsborough Law.
A Hillsborough Law Would:
Create a new legal duty of candour on public authorities and officials to tell the truth and proactively cooperate with official investigations and inquiries - bringing to an end the depressingly familiar pattern of cover ups and concealment.
Ensure victims of disasters or state-related deaths are entitled to parity of legal representation during inquests and inquiries. This will mean that bereaved families can get public funding, just as public money is used to support Government and public authority lawyers.
After decades of campaigning by victims of the Hillsborough disaster and subsequent justice campaigns, the Government has introduced the Hillsborough Law to Parliament. This legislation will:
Force public authorities and officials to tell the truth when something goes wrong, making it a criminal offence not to do so.
Force public authorities and officials to proactively assist in official investigations. That means setting out what they did wrong, rather than waiting for lawyer representing victims to uncover the truth through legal investigations.
Provide non-means tested legal support to families in inquests and inquiries involving the state.
This law will fundamentally change the relationship between the state and the public, providing actual accountability when things go wrong. But the fight isn’t over.
nATIONAL oversight Mechanism
Too often the lessons from public inquiries are ignored. From Covid to Grenfell and Hillsborough, governments have promised that lessons will be learned, yet vital recommendations have been left to gather dust. Families are forced to fight for years just to see the most basic changes made.
That is why we are campaigning for a National Oversight Mechanism. This would be an independent body to ensure recommendations from inquiries and inquests are tracked, published and acted upon. It would stop governments quietly forgetting promises made to bereaved families and the public.
We are working alongside Grenfell United, Hillsborough families, Infected Blood campaigners and others to demand this reform. Together we are saying that never again should lives be lost because lessons were ignored.
Reform of the Inquiry Act
We have campaigned from the beginning for inquiries that are fast, fair and truly independent. After losing our loved ones, we demanded a statutory Covid-19 inquiry with full powers under the Inquiries Act, and called for it to use interim reports so that urgent lessons could be learned while lives could still be saved.
Our journey to justice hasn’t been straight forward, though. We have had to fight at every turn to have our member’s voices heard in the Inquiry, and even then we have been excluded from some areas of investigation.
This matters because we know that life saving lessons will be learned from our experiences. We are fighting to make sure that bereaved families don’t have to fight the inquiry’s they bring about to have a voice.
Our campaign is about ensuring inquiries deliver answers and accountability, instead of delay, denial and broken promises.
Act Now
The Hillsborough Law has been introduced to Parliament, however it won’t become legislation until it has been considered in the House of Commons, the House of Lords and at Committee Stage.
We need to make sure it isn’t watered down at any point, and we need to fight to strengthen elements of the bill, including:
Making sure that the duty of candour and duty to assist extends to all public investigations, including local authority investigations, ombudsman investigations, the Care Quality Commission, and not just statutory inquiries and inquests.
Strengthening the criminal offence backing up the duty of candour and the duty to assist requirements.
Making sure amendments are made by devolved nations so that this legislation works fully across the UK.
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