Kieran Mullan MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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.

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

  More

  Q Sorry—the point was more that an individual officer might know about a certain set of circumstances, but they will not know all the circumstances, and they will have only a limited perspective because of the need-to-know principles that they operate on. Daniel De Simone: There are ways of dealing with that. You could say the same with a police investigation. The police officer might not have the full picture. The point is about whether there is going to be duty of candour responsibility on people generally within the organisation. Is there going to be a command responsibility generally on the director general? I think that is a separate point, because there is a way of dealing with that.

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

  More

  Q You can give a very short answer to this question, Mayor Burnham. Given the experience that you had with your inquiries into grooming gangs, do you agree that the five local grooming gangs inquiries should have a duty of candour applied to them—which is why I have tabled amendment 3 to the Bill? Andy Burnham: There is no question about it, those inquiries need to have trust at a local level. I will be open in saying that the failure of some people to co-operate with the inquiries that I initiated to some degree undermines the inquiry reports. I do not think it invalidates them, by any means, because they were hard-hitting reports, but it is right to deal with these things as soon as possible. The Hillsborough story is about not letting things be unresolved for years and not leaving people fighting for years. Deal with them as up front as you can, and as strongly as you can, at the first time of asking. Obviously, if that principle applies to local inquiries and inquiries commissioned by combined authorities, we are more likely to get to the truth more quickly.

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

  More

  It would be; thank you.

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

  More

  Q We also heard in evidence that court judges in other settings make decisions about appropriate costs and so on. With some training and support, could coroners be asked to fulfil a similar role in inquests? Judge Durran: My anxiety is that you are creating an additional level of work that takes coroners away from being in court and dealing with inquests. The covid-19 pandemic increased the backlog in coroner’s courts, as it did in other courts. There are considerable backlogs; the weeks to inquest have increased from pre-pandemic levels, and cases over 12 months—a number of areas are struggling with very high numbers. If you then inject a further level of work for coroners, you will take them away from what they need to be doing: being in court, hearing inquests and giving families closure.

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

  More

  Q 42 I am the shadow Minister. Thank you for coming along to assist us with our proceedings. I have a question for you, Deborah, on the work of INQUEST. Will you illustrate the practical effect at inquests of public bodies usually being heavily legally represented, while affected families do not necessarily have any legal representation? Deborah Coles: Thank you for the question. It has been a long-standing campaign of ours to try and sort out what we perceive is a real inequality of arms. The best way to describe it is that it is a traumatic and distressing process to go through an inquest into the death of your loved one in any event, but to try and navigate those processes without your own individual legal representation, and even be expected to ask questions yourself or rely on the coroner to do so on your behalf, is not only extremely unfair but I think perpetuates the sense that the system is not working to get to the truth and to deliver the answers that you want as a bereaved person about how your loved one died. I can think of so many examples since INQUEST was set up where families still today talk about the retraumatising nature of the inquest process. What legal representation can do as well is enhance the really important preventive function that an inquest can play in safeguarding lives in the future, but that is only where you have a family with the benefit of a lawyer to explore the areas of concern. In our experience, too often the default of state and corporate lawyers is to try and defend their reputations, to try and narrow the scope of the inquest process, and try and prevent consideration of the very serious issues that need exploring, particularly when we are talking here about how our work is predominantly around state-related deaths, where the state had a duty of care towards somebody. In our experience, it is only through legal representation and where families feel that they can play a meaningful and effective part in the process that the truth can come out.

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

  More

  Q I hope we can have a sensible discussion about the fact that, while a lot of what we have heard has been about good faith whistleblowers, people raising legitimate concerns that go on to be proved to be accurate, there are also people who operate in that space who fit other categories. There are good faith whistleblowers who are incorrect, and there are bad faith whistleblowers—people who have issues in their own performance, feel under pressure and use those kinds of powers inappropriately. How do we guard against that and ensure that anything we do to support the right actors does not support the wrong people? Flora Page: An office that was used to these problems would quite easily and quickly winnow out the people who were using it as a front. Often it is as simple as the chronology: if a whistleblower has been trundling along just fine in their job, and then they speak up and suffer detriment, that often means they are a genuine whistleblower. If it turns out that there has been all sorts of back and forth about personal grievance issues first, and then they start blowing the whistle, that is a different matter. Often it is as simple as that. People who are used to these matters—at WhistleblowersUK, there is a great deal of triaging of the inquiries that come in—can quite quickly tell who is a genuine whistleblower.

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

  More

  Q I have questions for Ms Page from WhistleblowersUK. We have had a lot of discussion today about whistleblowers in relation to other incidents. What are your reflections on the Bill, and what impact do you think it will make for people within organisations who think that there is wrongdoing, but do not necessarily feel able to share that with other people? Flora Page: Let me answer that partly with reference to your earlier question; I have also been involved in the Post Office case, and it seems to me that there are some difficulties about whether the Bill would have applied, because it is not clear that the people to whom one would wish the duty of candour to attach would necessarily be public officials. I think there are also difficulties about whether Ron’s investigation would have qualified as an inquiry or investigation—so there are a number of difficulties. That takes me back to whistleblowers and your second question. The whistleblower provisions that we have in law at the moment are wholly inadequate, and the reason is that they put the onus on the whistleblower to enforce their rights as if they were employment rights, through the Employment Tribunal. That is entirely wrong-headed: when you speak up, it is not an employment issue; it is a public interest issue. When you are a whistleblower and it falls to you to protest any detriment that you might be suffering, it is treated as if it were a personal grievance matter—as it often is in the Employment Tribunal—rather than being taken out of the whistleblower’s hands and put into the hands of somebody who is there to look out for the public interest. I can speak from very direct personal experience representing whistleblowers in the Employment Tribunal. It is an incredibly hostile environment for them. If they go all the way to a hearing, they are having to speak up again, often the people they have spoken up about are right behind them, and they have no protection. It is an unreasonable demand for people to have to put their families and their future employment in jeopardy and to be that brave. Some of the people whom I have acted for have been that brave, but that story is not a good story to tell; people do not want to be in that position. You cannot go out and say, “This is super. Let’s celebrate being a whistleblower,” because nobody wants to have to put themselves in that position—at their own expense, if they have sought legal representation. What we need is a much nimbler inquiry or person who is responsible for stepping in if the employer is not dealing with the whistleblower properly, so that it is taken out of the whistleblower’s hands and becomes a public interest matter. At WhistleblowersUK, there is a lot of talk about an office for the whistleblower, because that would be something that took it out of the whistleblower’s hands and took it out of the employment context.

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

  More

  Q You are obviously not here as a legal expert, and we would not hold you to that standard, but do you have some observations on how you think, from your own experience, the Bill as currently constituted will work well and how it might not? Daniel De Simone: There has been evidence earlier today from other witnesses. MI5, as things stand—as I understand it—would not be subject to the same level of responsibilities as other organisations. They would be like a corporate responsibility organisation, not with full command responsibility for the director general. The cases we have heard about—my case, which is still ongoing, and the Manchester Arena—show that there have been very recent examples where there has been a significant failure of a duty of candour. That raises a question about whether MI5 can be relied on to give honest and accurate evidence. With the Manchester Arena example, they gave a false picture, an inaccurate picture, about the key intelligence that was received before the bombing. In my case, they gave false evidence to three different courts. When that was accepted by them—with some reluctance, I must add—they then said they were going to investigate it and also appointed an external investigator. Those reports were inadequate. That is not my view but that of the Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales and other senior judges, and the Prime Minister has ordered a new investigation. Even after they accepted it, they still then came to the High Court and gave an inaccurate picture. They gave evidence to the court that was open, and then when they were forced to hand over the closed material, it did not reflect the reality, and the judges said that to them. That is why I think the duty of candour really does apply very importantly to MI5. If it has an exemption and is not treated the same as other organisations, that is a bit of an issue. We have very recent, current examples of where they are not being candid with courts.

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

  More

  Q But do you accept that, if you do that, a whole series of people will say that WhistleblowersUK, or a whistleblowers office, was not listening to them, not sufficiently representing them and covering up the things they were alleging? Flora Page: You could easily. I suppose one would seek to front-load the issues. I am not against the provisions of the Bill at all, but what the Bill deals with is after the event: some terrible thing has happened, a large inquiry has been set up and we are having to unpick the fact that people have not told the truth in real time. With something that protected and supported whistleblowers up front, one would hope to be able to bring the problem forward, and have much nimbler and cheaper investigations arising out of whistleblower complaints. If there were disgruntled people moaning and saying their concerns had not been looked into, let them trundle along and see whether, 10 years down the line, it turns into a big public inquiry; nine times out of 10—or probably 99 times out of 100—it is not going to. My view is that we spend too much money on these public inquiries. We need to find a way to front-load the problem and support people when they first start speaking up, so they feel able to put those problems, first, into the employer domain and then, if necessary, into the public domain.