Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to begin the new term with support for this Bill. I begin with my tributes, first, of course, to the Hillsborough law campaigners—survivors, family members, lawyers, and supporters—a shining example to anyone who strives against grave injustice anywhere in the world. When this Bill passes, I hope soon, the achievement will be theirs, to the benefit of millions of others. I remember awarding them a Liberty human rights award at a star-studded ceremony 13 years ago. They were the real stars. Their struggle, as we have heard, began 24 years earlier in 1989, with the greatest sporting event disaster in our history and the long, corrupt cover-up that followed. It is sad that even in the two years since the last general election, there have been concerted attempts to create blanket exemptions and prevent anything now recognisable as the Bill’s central duty of candour reaching the statute book—so thanks are due also to the new Prime Minister, a long-time supporter of the campaign in and out of Parliament and government. His return to Westminster will no doubt have focused minds and shifted roadblocks. Thirdly, respect is due to my noble friend Lady Levitt, whose name graces the Section 19 statement of human rights compatibility on the face of the Bill. We shall miss her criminal legal expertise at the close of this debate, but it is so good to hear her participating with her characteristic distinction. I suggest that the whole House should support this measure: progressives with our instinctive loathing of inequalities of arms and abuses of power; conservatives with their deeply held suspicions of the dangers of overweening and unaccountable state power in particular; and independents—but hopefully all of us—with an unshakable commitment to the rule of law. It is not insignificant that we will hear from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale of Richmond, today. After Hillsborough, Windrush, infected blood, the Manchester Arena, Grenfell, the postmasters and countless other scandals where public bodies closed ranks at the expense of their victims and the public they were supposed to serve, it can no longer complacently be claimed that a statutory duty of candour is not necessary in our old, unbroken democracy. And to be clear—to be very clear—genuinely sensitive, as opposed to embarrassing, information will continue to be protected. Public trust in vital institutions is in short supply. Having called for, served on and studied various probes over many years, even I have become sometimes cynical at the way that politicians respond to public outcry with long-grass inquiries, to which respondents may obfuscate and even lie with impunity, and where public bodies are represented by banks of expensive lawyers while victims and their families struggle to be heard on a shoestring. As we have heard, parity of representation is another vital pillar of the scheme. I hope that it is sufficiently robust in its formulation. By no means least is the requirement of codes of ethical conduct for public authorities to embed the duty of candour in culture as well as law. If there are any remaining sceptics of this ground-breaking Bill, to them I say this. Of course law alone cannot remedy instincts rooted in collective vested interests in self-preservation. Still, law can help encourage and enforce better instincts that are, in the end, in the best long-term interests of vital public services and institutions. In the words of the great former US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman”. Scrutiny is of course needed, but surely the supportive scrutiny in this Bill is what those who have struggled for it for so long so richly deserve.