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The government is delaying the Hillsborough Law next stage until next week because of a backlash by Labour MPs to attempts to water down “duty of candour” for the security services, Sky News understands.
The Public Office Accountability Bill is designed to establish a “duty of candour” in law, which would mean public servants must tell the truth in future public inquiries or other investigations, or else face legal consequences.
It follows the 1989 Hillsborough disaster that led to 97 deaths, and subsequent efforts by some officials to mislead about events that led up to the tragedy.
The issue, as Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates explained, is the matter of duty of candour covering MI5 and MI6.
Speaking on the Politics with Sam and Anne podcast, he said: “The security services are deeply uncomfortable with this. So what’s been going on in the background is there’s been a hell of a negotiation, a negotiation with the campaign groups, Labour MPs and the Cabinet Office and the security services to make sure that the duty of candour is proportionate when it comes to the intelligence services.
“And the campaigners accept caveats. They know that you can’t have unfettered access to everything the intelligence services do, so they hammered out a compromise.
“Clause six of the Public Office Accountability Bill is the compromise.
“But then, when the bill was published, they discovered that the government had done the dirty on them, effectively.”
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Coates explained the draft bill only set out a duty of candour corporately – meaning only organisations and not individuals in the security services could be asked to testify, except for where “the bosses of those intelligence services have given very specific authorisation”.
He added: “So in other words, there was no individual responsibility for intelligence officers under this, which now has caused the mother of all rebellions against this in the background because it is not what they were promised.”
It is expected the delay will be until next Monday, instead of the next stage of the bill taking place this Wednesday as planned.
