Kieran Mullan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  But that is kind of circular, because it takes us back to the coroners. Are the coroners in a position to do that? It is not something they have to do at the minute. As we heard in evidence, judges do that—it is part and parcel of their work—but it is not part of what coroners do. What are we doing in terms of support, information and guidance, and then monitoring that they actually do it?

• 4 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for explaining the clause to us. She has provided the reassurance that we are looking for, and I look forward to receiving further material in writing. I recognise that the Government are attempting to craft an offence that has a high threshold and does not interfere with the wide range of situations that people might seek to apply it to, but I worry that we might end up seeing such questions tested in the courts repeatedly before there is a settled view on what they translate into in reality. I am not sure that it will be as simple as we might think in reality. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 11, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill. Schedule 3 Offences under Part 2: related provision

• 4 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I asked how a coroner would be challenged if they were not adequately policing this. In practice, if a public authority is not doing this in the way that we would want it to, how does the Minister envisage that it will be held to account and costs driven down?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak to amendment 3, and I also welcome the intention behind amendment 1. Amendment 3 relates to the scope of the duty of candour as it applies to non-statutory inquiries. Members will know that the Bill does not just impose a duty of candour on public bodies in major statutory inquiries that are set up under the Inquiries Act 2005; it allows Ministers to apply that same duty to non-statutory inquiries—or inquiries that, for various sensible reasons, may not require the full statutory machinery but none the less investigate matters of profound public concern. Paragraph 2 of schedule 1 sets out the conditions under which a non-statutory inquiry may fall within the Bill: it must be initiated by a Minister; it must be intended to produce a published report; and the Minister must certify that the events in question have caused, or are capable of causing, public concern. That is a broadly drawn but important framework. However, there is a real risk that some of the most sensitive, complex and deeply distressing inquiries currently being established will fall entirely outside this regime. I refer specifically to the local grooming gangs inquiries announced by the Government. These inquiries were promised to victims, survivors and affected communities as part of the commitment to shine a light on failures by public agencies over many decades to protect vulnerable children. They will be examining events that could not be more clearly connected to public concern and public confidence. Unless they are expressly captured by the Bill, however, the public bodies involved will not necessarily be subject to the statutory duty of candour that the Bill intends to deliver; it will be left to the whims of the Government of the day. Given the chequered history of this Administration, that is not a position that we would want to be left in, and it is not a position that many victims would want to be left in. The amendment is therefore designed to remove any doubt by making it clear that the non-statutory inquiries designated by the Secretary of State as local grooming gang inquiries fall squarely within paragraph 2. It is a simply, clarifying amendment that protects victims, the integrity of the process and the public from the possibility of these inquiries falling into a grey area. It is worth reminding the Committee why this matters. Across multiple towns and cities, victims were failed because agencies did not share information, confront uncomfortable truths and, in some cases, tell the public the full story. A duty of candour is not a mere formality in this context; it is an essential means by which we ensure that the same patterns of silence, defensiveness and institutional self-protection do not re-emerge. If the Bill’s purpose is to raise standards in public life, to restore trust and to ensure openness in the face of institutional wrongdoing, surely these inquires—the very ones where a failure of candour has had the most devastating impacts—must be included explicitly. The Government may well argue that the wording already allows these inquiries to be covered. If that is the case, there is no harm in making it clear. If it is not the case, there is every reason for us to fix that today. This amendment is not partisan. We heard from Mayor Burnham about his direct experience of a local grooming gang inquiry that lacked a duty of candour, and how he felt the inquiry would have benefited enormously from one. He supported our amendment to ensure that all other local inquiries would be subject to such a duty once the Bill became law. The timing may not be perfect, but given the speed with which the Government seek to proceed with the Bill, and the positive impact it could have even now if public officials knew that this was incoming, I cannot see any reason why the Government would oppose the measure. It is straightforward and would ensure that when victims and survivors are told that lessons will be learned, we will do everything possible to guarantee that that is done honestly, fully and transparently by ensuring that inquiries have all the information they need. Amendment 1—I believe this was touched on earlier, in relation to panels and what will fully constitute inclusion in the Bill—is helpful to ensure that when a Minister commissions one of these important panels, it is not simply left to them to decide whether it suits them to include the duty of candour. I therefore welcome that amendment.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you for that further clarification, Sir Roger. These issues are absolutely live and happening all the time—this week alone, we have seen examples of it—and we need to understand the implications of the Bill. I am far from alone in recognising the difficulty in defining terms such as “candour” and “public interest”. John Coggon, professor of law at the University of Bristol law school, writes: “The public interest has no single, fixed definition. Even as a technical term of art its sense varies both for being context dependent and for being a question that may be settled by different sorts of institutional actor. It may, for instance, demand consideration of national security, national economic interest, protection of health, maintenance of a justice system, protection of fundamental rights. And determinations may be made by courts, politicians, legislators, executive agencies, and so on. Each can and will bring different forms and ranges of consideration to the process of determining what the public interest demands, and whether those demands are compelling.” Anyone who has spent any time inside a public body—a police force, a regulator or a Government Department—knows that the public interest can mean very different things to different people. It is shaped by context, role, circumstance and sometimes professional norms. What one official believes to be in the public interest, a Minister, senior civil servant or statutory body might see very differently. That is not mere theory; it is the daily reality of modern governance. Questions were raised during the evidence sessions about how the public interest might be used inappropriately in defence of an allegation of misconduct in public office. As new clause 2 points to, paragraph 1(8)(b) of schedule 1 specifically allows for the withholding of information in the public interest. Failing in that area could lead to both those we would wish not to be prosecuted being prosecuted and those we want to see prosecuted escaping justice. It is an important area of how the Bill will operate. I am not so ambitious as to suggest that through the Bill the Committee will be able to create a perfect definition of public interest, but I speak in support of the new clause in an attempt to ensure that the Government recognise that they need to properly engage with that issue if the Bill is to be successful. A definition of the public interest need not be exhaustive, as I have said, but the wide-ranging ramifications of the Bill place an onus on the Government to ensure that the frontline civil servant of any kind has somewhere to look and turn to when wrestling with these matters—a starting point that might help them to structure their thinking and make decisions. By failing to define the term at all, even in the most basic way, the Bill risks giving us a duty that is challenging to operate for a junior civil servant. It risks more uncertainty about compliance, inconsistency between institutions and even potential litigation where prosecutors or courts are left to decide after the fact what Parliament must have meant. The obvious challenging scenario is when officials need to consider situations where there are competing public interests—national security versus transparency, value for money versus speed of delivery, or personal privacy versus public accountability. Without more assistance for thinking those matters through, how does an official protect themselves from the—possibly criminal—allegation that their judgment call was not in the public interest among competing interests? The new clause does not attempt to dictate exactly what public interest must mean; it simply requires the Secretary of State to set out a structure or framework in regulations, subject to approval by both Houses. Ultimately, if this legislation is to achieve the cultural change that the Government claim it will, the foundations must be clear and easy to understand. Public officials should not be left purely guessing what Parliament might have meant, or how we expected them to weigh these issues—Parliament should tell them. New clause 2 offers the Government the opportunity to do exactly that, and I hope they will take it.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister rightly describes how tightly the courts consider these matters in detail. As the Bill puts a whole range of very junior civil servants in the firing line, does she at least accept that guidance or materials might be helpful to assist a broader audience in how they approach these issues in their day-to-day work?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I emphasise that we need clarity on this. Those of us who were able to attend the meeting with the intelligence services will know that they seemed to provide quite a clear account of their individual personal responsibility and all the ways in which they thought the Bill would affect them. That was quite clearly contradicted in our evidence from other witnesses. I am grateful to the Minister for sending round a further note to Committee members this morning, and for our brief chat ahead of this sitting. Even that note raises further contradictions, however, because it says, and I quote, that “the individual public officials working for the UK intelligence services are capable of being caught by the offence of failing to comply with the duty of candour”. It lists some other ones, but it includes the duty of candour. Further down, it says, “the Bill specifies that the duty of candour and assistance can only be addressed to public authorities and not individual public officials”. The Minister was able to give me a brief, informal explanation of that, but I do think this is extremely important. It may be that people are happy for the security services to be excluded to a certain extent, but we have to vote on a shared understanding of what exactly the Bill does in relation to them as entire organisations, as well as to the people who work for them and those who are in charge. I would be grateful if the Minister provided some clarity on that.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. The Bill is focused on those examples that are clear and egregious, where it is easy to say that there has been a failure of candour or a deliberate attempt to cover up. The legislation will cover many other situations, however, including Members of Parliament. As Members of Parliament, we are expected to operate with a degree of frankness and candour, and yet just this week we have been fiercely debating whether one of our own has or has not done that. It is important for Members to reflect on the wideness of the ramifications outside the purely obvious examples of what might constitute candour, or a lack of it.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 3, in schedule 1, page 26, line 30, at end insert— “(1A) Inquiries under subsection (1) include those designated by the Secretary of State as local inquiries into grooming gangs.” This amendment would apply the Duty of Candour to the five local grooming gangs’ inquiries announced by the Government and any further ones established.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise briefly to support the amendment and the points made by the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills. It is about not just existing contractual arrangements, but how there might be perverse incentives for people to create different structures if they think that, through contracting or subcontracting, they will escape the accountability under the Bill. I am keen to hear from the Minister. Probably the example that everyone has in mind is the Post Office scandal. That was a direct contractor, but it could have had subcontractors and so on. When the Post Office was conducting its private investigations, it might have used subcontractors to do some of those investigations. That would not be an unusual step for an organisation to take, so it is important that we get clarity on this issue.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does the provision of treatment to an individual constitute an incident? That is what we have been talking about in relation to Primodos.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  On amendment 1, I accept the Government’s intention to clarify further how these things will operate. On panels and non-statutory inquiries, although there is sometimes in Government a resistance to public inquiries for the wrong reasons, sometimes it is because they are expensive and time-consuming. The real opportunity for applying the duty of candour more widely is that if we can ensure that non-public inquiries get all the information they need, they are much more likely to be successful, thereby avoiding a future public inquiry with all the associated costs that lawyers make a huge amount of money from. On amendment 3, although the Minister outlined the future public inquiry, the local inquiries have not been cancelled. There is clearly a view that they must also proceed. I cannot see any reason why we would not want them to proceed on the basis that they are subject to the duty of candour.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  On that basis, the Minister should not have any objection to the amendment, because it would confirm that position more explicitly. We will therefore push it to a vote. Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Sir Roger. Committee members have been fiercely disagreeing on something that relates directly to the matters that we are considering today on frankness and candour. I think that demonstrates just how challenging these things will be. We are the politicians who are putting forward this legislation.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Another example of what we have been discussing this morning is Primodos and drug companies. Does the Minister expect drug companies to be captured as well?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. As we consider the clause and new clause 2, I want to be clear that the Opposition recognise the importance of the Bill’s overarching aims. Candour, transparency, frankness and, above all, the requirement that public officials act in the public interest are principles that I am sure Members from all parties support. As we commented on during evidence sessions about the chief coroner, it would be quite wrong to portray good-faith efforts to ensure that we give due consideration to each and every possible implication of the Bill as in any way not giving due regard to its noble aims, in particular the considerable effort and good intentions of the many campaigners supporting it, including the ones we heard from during the evidence sessions. As the Minister commented, I do not think that anyone could have been anything but deeply moved and reflective on hearing the experiences that the witnesses went through in such appalling circumstances. They were a limited group, but one made up not just of those affected by Hillsborough but those affected by many other scandals in which the state and its bodies covered up and mistreated people. Ultimately, even if we believe that the Bill could be improved, and we will hold the Government to account for any unintended consequences, we support the Bill and do not expect to oppose it on Third Reading. I hope that that is an important message for the campaigners supporting it. However, we want to probe the Government’s thinking and suggest possible improvements. Before we come to the specifics of our new clause, I will comment on clause 1 as a whole, as it lays out the core purpose of the Bill and highlights just how far the political class as a whole has to come in delivering candour, and how contentious these matters can be. In the very weeks we have been considering this Bill, with the Government professing to want to drive further improvements in the candour and frankness of accountability, we have been having a heated and highly contested public debate about what constitutes candour and frankness. I raise that debate not to further discuss it in Committee—it would not be appropriate to engage in it for its merits—but just to highlight exactly how contentious such things are. We have a Chancellor who, in my view, has clearly failed to operate with candour and frankness, but I am sure that view is fiercely opposed by other members of the Committee.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  As I said, that is an example. I am not wishing to make the point— [ Interruption. ] I have said quite clearly that you will disagree with me on that, but that is the point that I am making.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Perhaps the point the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills was making was that the Minister referred to a separate piece of legislation, the Public Records Act 1958, and I am not sure that that legislation includes things like contractors and subcontractors.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I hope I can be of assistance. I think the clause is about the public authority’s obligation to explain to its employees all the things they can do to raise a concern. I do not think that it is directed at the individuals who might be required to do things. It might be better for it to say that the authority must ensure that that information is available. If we read it in the context of the public authority’s obligations, it is about what the authority should tell people, rather than placing any obligation in relation to individuals’ actions. I hope that might explain it more clearly.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Criminal Court Reform · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During the questioning, the Justice Secretary referred to the Victims’ Commissioner supporting these proposals. For the record, will he make it clear that, sadly, the Victims’ Commissioner passed away a number of weeks ago and cannot possibly have seen these proposals? He may have been referring to the incoming Victims’ Commissioner, who starts in January, but the statement she has released today makes no reference to the Justice Secretary’s proposals on changes to jury trials. I wonder if he might have inadvertently misled the House about that.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts · Hansard source

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  I feel I should declare at the start of this question that I am one of the few people in the Chamber who apparently is not shocked at what has been going on this week. I am also not shocked that a Labour Cabinet member has said: “The handling of this Budget has been a disaster from start to finish”. Can the Chief Secretary tell us which Labour Cabinet member said that, and can they have a bigger role in the next Budget?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Draft Judicial Appointments Commission (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. As the Minister outlined, these regulations make modest and technical changes to the Judicial Appointments Commission—an additional professional commissioner and some tidying up of the eligibility for the senior tribunal commissioner. Even technical changes, however, sit within a wider landscape. We now have a judicial system in which unelected bodies have accumulated significant power, but without the accountability to Parliament or to the public that should accompany it. We saw that clearly with the recent controversy of the Sentencing Council’s two-tier sentencing guidelines, which would have meant different punishments for the same crime depending on ethnicity, faith background or immigration status. That represents a profound departure from the basic Conservative principle of equality before the law, and is every bit as much a departure from what the public instinctively and rightly expect: that sentencing should be based on the offence committed, not the personal characteristics of the offender. Although the Government now claim to oppose two tier-justice, they continue to defend and even expand the structures created under the last Labour Government —the very architecture that allowed these distortions to emerge in the first place. The JAC is one such body. It was created in the Blair era as a part of a constitutional re-engineering that removed power from elected Ministers and transferred it into arm’s length structures. What was marketed as modernising the constitution has instead weakened accountability, fractured responsibility and left Ministers able to duck the consequences of poor appointments or failing standards. That is why we set out our intention to replace the JAC with a judicial vetting committee within the Lord Chancellor’s office, bringing real transparency and accountability back into judicial appointments, while maintaining judicial independence in the courtroom. We do not believe that layering more commissioners on top of an outdated structure will restore public trust, nor do we believe that expanding the body responsible for judicial appointments without addressing the structural weaknesses that I have outlined will deliver the fairness and impartiality that people expect. We want a system where the Lord Chancellor, answerable to Parliament and the public, has proper responsibility for judicial appointments, supported by a transparent judicial vetting committee to ensure that appointments are made on merit but with clear accountability. That is how we restore trust—not by expanding arm’s length bodies, but by ensuring clear democratic lines of accountability. The public want a justice system that is more accountable, and we will continue in the months and years ahead to make the case for that.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am the shadow Justice Minister. To start with, may I just check how you would like to be addressed? Judge Durran: “Judge”—is that easiest?

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q When we met them, the leadership of the organisation considered that they would be personally criminally liable for any failure to operate the duty of candour. Do you think that is not the case? Daniel De Simone: I am not a legal expert, but from what I understand there is not a full command responsibility on, for example, the director general of MI5, as things stand. There is not the same level of responsibility on the individual officers as there is on, for example, the police or Government Departments. There is a question about why that is, given how important MI5 often is in very significant cases. MI5 often gives evidence corporately to courts and inquiries, and that has been shown, in our case, to be very unsatisfactory. The High Court has issued new guidance on the way MI5 should give corporate evidence, so that it has to be much clearer about where the information comes from and who is responsible for it. We have spoken a lot about inquests today. In inquests, MI5 always tends to give evidence corporately, via an anonymous corporate witness. The individual officers who make the decisions are not called. With the Manchester Arena case, we saw how important that was, because the corporate witness came along and gave one account in public, and when the arena inquiry chairman made the individual officers come along in a closed session—that, of course, would not be available in an inquest, but this was a public inquiry—he got a totally different account. That is why there is a real importance on individual officers having accountability and corporate witnesses having accountability, because they are corporate witnesses representing the organisation. To be blunt, the director general of MI5 is not really the corporate witness; it is normally someone else who is quite senior, but not the director general.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q What provisions in the Bill could be most helpful to the sorts of people you will be seeking to represent? In what areas, if any, do you think the Bill could be changed? Cindy Butts: Fundamentally, it is the fact that public officials will be required to act with candour not only in their daily work, but in respect of inquests, public inquiries and any other review processes that might ensue. That is really important, and it can certainly go a long way to recognising the gap, which has existed for far too long, whereby organisations are able to protect their own interests and hide the truth. The Bill can go a long way to filling that gap. Having said that, although I fundamentally welcome the Bill, it has a number of gaps. I have written to the Committee with my evidence. Some of it relates directly to the Bill, and admittedly other elements sit slightly outside it, but I cheekily wanted to put those issues forward, because I think they are fundamental in terms of truth finding. In terms of the gaps, the first thing is that the independent public advocate is not mentioned at all in the Bill. That is not a technical omission, but a structural flaw. When public bodies face major incidents—that is obviously the prism through which I am looking at this—they look to the statute that governs candour, and if the IPA is not referenced in that, they will assume that the IPA has no standing in the candour framework. They will not know what co-operation is expected or required of them, and they will treat the duty of candour as something separate from my statutory role. My office, which was created because candour failed, cannot be absent from legislation that is designed to make candour succeed. That is why a carefully drafted provision ought to be in the Bill. The other area I wish to highlight is the lack of coherence in moral language. What we know—this is a very insidious problem—is that in major incidents, different parts of the state speak in different moral registers. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, which brought my role into being, the Hillsborough charter and now this Bill all speak in very different moral language. The Bill is very much in legal terms, the Hillsborough charter is very much in moral terms and the Victims and Prisoners Act is very operational. I do not think that this is a matter of semantics. It is absolutely fundamental that we have coherence among all the different elements because we know that, otherwise, when organisations are put under pressure, they revert to what is easiest to do. Not having that coherence allows them the ability to navigate to their own advantage. Another element that requires careful consideration relates to the monitoring of the duty of candour. The Prime Minister announced only a few weeks ago that the Ethics and Integrity Commission would be tasked with setting the framework and monitoring organisations’ adherence to the duty of candour. I think that is right. Having said that, in respect of major incidents, I do not think the Ethics and Integrity Commission is the right organisation to monitor compliance; that should sit with the Independent Public Advocate—with my role—ensuring that organisations are adhering to the duty of candour. The Ethics and Integrity Commission would not be on the ground. It would not have access to, or a relationship with, victims. That gap ought to be filled.