Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)

I have rewritten chunks of my speech because other people have said what I was going to say and have said it better. I support the Bill and hope that the Government will listen to some of the amendments that will be tabled, because it can be improved. It seems that noble Lords from all around the House agree that it is a stain on the country when families who have suffered so much should then have to fight the state for the truth and for understanding that it did wrong. Public institutions should tell the truth, even, or particularly, when the truth is uncomfortable. Hillsborough should have changed this culture, but again and again what we are seeing is the same instinct—the same culture—to protect the institution rather than the people it has failed. All tribute to the Hillsborough Law Now campaign for the fact that it pushed so hard and made us listen. In fact, many of us have been calling this the “Hillsborough Bill” from the start. Of course, this goes much wider than Hillsborough. We have heard of the incredible losses that people experienced, but there is the Post Office scandal, the infected blood scandal, the Grenfell scandal and the Manchester Arena scandal—scandal after scandal where institutions cared more about protecting their reputation than they did about helping the people who have been impacted. The Bill will be an important step in changing that culture, but only if it is tough and only if we understand that you do not change a culture just with words. A lot of processes have to really work inside it. For example, making something a criminal offence will not change that culture on its own. I welcome Clause 10 and its duty on public authorities to promote and maintain ethical conduct, but that needs to mean more than just another policy document. It needs leadership and proper monitoring, alongside practical codes of practice. The question should not simply be, “Has the law been complied with?” It should be, “Has the culture changed?” The Bill rightly creates consequences when a public authority fails to meet its duty of candour, including the possibility of financial penalties. But if a public authority is fined, it is the taxpayer who pays. How on earth is that a deterrent? We really have to rethink these things. We need to be clear about who is accountable when there is serious institutional failure. I am not suggesting that every institutional failure is the personal responsibility of a chief executive, but where those at the top are responsible, there needs to be a clear line of accountability. Obviously, this would apply to water companies as much as any other sort of organisation. Codes of practice mean that people can speak and can be judged on what they say. I emphasise the role of whistleblowing. I have had an experience with a whistleblower myself, and if I have time at the end I might talk about my little brush with a public institution that lied to me and distorted things. It shows that almost every public institution will hide its wrongdoing if it possibly can. Of course, all this raises the wider question: what about politicians? How are we going to pass a law that does not include ourselves? Why is it that everybody else has to tell the truth but not elected politicians and Peers? That is very wrong. It is wrong to pass a Bill that does not include us. I am not questioning parliamentary privilege—I accept that we can protect political debate—but we have to draw a line around deliberate deception. If we are prepared to demand candour from public servants, surely we should be prepared to ask it of ourselves. Do we have the legal capacity to deliver the Bill? The Government anticipate an increase in legally aided inquest cases from a few hundred to potentially over 11,000 per year. I hope this will be off-set by the fact that the duty of candour will mean swift justice as opposed to long, drawn-out cases. That would be a really positive result. University life ought to be covered in the Bill as well. I am not sure which bits are covered and which are not. How will the duties of candour and ethical conduct work in practice in higher education? What happens after an inquiry or inquest? What is the point of establishing the truth if nobody is responsible for making sure that changes happen? My experience of being lied to by a public institution was being lied to by the Met. Back in 2012, somebody in my team at the London Assembly suggested that I ask for my record with the police. Other people had been doing it. The police very kindly sent me a report. They had me on their domestic extremist database, which obviously, for a rabid Green like me, was useful notoriety. I really did not mind at all. There were only 17 entries on this report and every single one was something that I had boasted about, either in newsletters or on social media—speaking to a rally in Trafalgar Square, going on a bike ride with some protesters and that sort of thing. I laughed at this. I thought it was so trivial: why on earth had they spent all those years trying to compile a report on me when I was telling them what I was doing anyway? Later, however, a whistleblower came forward and told me that in the same month after I had asked for my report, he saw three officers engaged in physically destroying a number of police records by shredding. He believed that all those records were related to me. There were in excess of 30 reports. One of those officers then began to electronically delete a number of police records from a police database. Again, the whistleblower thought those records were about me. He had an absolutely miserable time afterwards in the Met and finally left. He said that he did not become a police officer “to monitor politicians or political parties, nor to pay casual disregard to policy and procedure”. Whistleblowers are people who we have to protect very seriously. We have to make sure that they are not driven out of their jobs by people who do not want to be reported on. I very much support the Bill. I hope that we can amend it and make it much better.