Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the distinguished noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale. I too am conscious, as she said, that most things have probably already been said. None the less, this is such important legislation that it is crucial that those who want to do so participate in it, and that is why I continue to make my contribution. I want to start, too, by paying tribute to the families, because without them—without only them—we would not be having this debate today. The disaster that occurred at Hillsborough was not a natural disaster or an accident. It was caused by the failure of police officers at every level to do their job and ensure that the fans were safe. That failure, as we have heard, was compounded in the subsequent decades by deliberate, repeated lying and cover-up by the police, by the abject failure of the judiciary, courts and lawyers to uncover the truth, and by the terrible complicity of parts of the media, with one newspaper in particular fabricating stories to vilify the fans and sustain the lie that they themselves were to blame. I can recall immediately what I was doing on 15 April 1989 when the radio broadcast a newsflash that a major incident was unfolding at the stadium. My husband’s two younger brothers were among the Liverpool fans at that game, and like many other families we were desperate for news and watched on television the chaotic and heart-rending scenes as fans themselves rushed on to the pitch with make-do stretchers—but with no sign for a long time of any police officers or emergency workers. And so began that day what was to be decades of fighting for justice to clear the names of the fans and to make accountable those who were truly responsible. The response of state institutions and organisations to the Hillsborough disaster has been an absolute scandal. Having finally got the truth, not through the courts but through Bishop James Jones and the Hillsborough Independent Panel, we may have expected that lessons would be learned; but instead, as we have also heard today, we have since had the Horizon scandal, Grenfell, grooming gangs, infected blood and other further evidence of institutionalised corruption, cover-up and failure to expose injustice and protect victims. Almost 30 years after Hillsborough, I had personal experience of this culture. In 2017, the then Mayor of Greater Manchester, now the Prime Minister, established two local independent inquiries. The first was into the response of the emergency services on the night of the Manchester Arena bomb and was led by our departed colleague Lord Kerslake. The other was into the BBC allegations that police and local authorities had failed to investigate and protect the young victims of child sexual exploitation. As the then Deputy Mayor for Greater Manchester for Police, Crime and Fire, I chaired the steering groups for both those inquiries and both were severely hampered by the intransigence of every public service—the police, fire and rescue, local authorities. Sir Bob came to see me on many occasions to try to unlock the resistance to providing information. Until we had a new chief constable some years later, when the culture did begin to change, the process was tortuous, protracted and strangled by legal machinations. Even some elected councillors were more concerned with reputational damage to their councils than exposing injustice on behalf of the victims who were of course their electorate. There is a common thread here: that organisational reputation has counted for more than truth, accountability, transparency and justice for victims and the public. Therefore, it is very important that the measures in this Bill apply equally to all inquiries, including those instigated locally, and to elected representatives where they have a public responsibility. It is something of an indictment, and colleagues have said as much today, that this Bill is necessary, but necessary it undoubtedly is, and I fully support all the measures. But we have to ask ourselves how it is that public officials could lie, that the judiciary could be so incurious, and that newspapers can fabricate stories. The answer, of course, as we have heard today, and I agree, lies in the culture. So, while this Bill is necessary, it is not of itself sufficient unless it drives fundamental change in the culture of the state, its organisations and the people who work in it. It must change not only behaviour but mindset. It must inculcate a culture in which our public officials, our organisations and their leaders actually feel themselves that their first and foremost responsibility is to the public, to service users, to victims and to families. There is much to commend in the Bill. As we have heard today, there are issues to be resolved and there are also some areas for improvement. I support the calls we have already heard for command responsibility—for the head of an organisation to be personally responsible for compliance—for better protection for whistleblowers, and for strengthening the powers and resources of the Independent Public Advocate. The noble Baroness, Lady May, explained how that may be of greater assistance to many members of the public than a formal inquiry. Finally, there is the issue of removing the requirement to prove harm from the offence of misleading the public. There are also wide-ranging implications for the recruitment of senior leaders—who we recruit and how we recruit them—and for training throughout the public sector. By placing transparency at the heart of public accountability and reinforcing the expectation of proactive disclosure rather than reputational management, the Bill has the potential, at least, to transform the relationship between the state and the citizen and begin to rebuild public trust in our public services.