Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill

We must learn the lessons, and ensure that never again will families bereaved by public disasters have to endure their lost loved ones being smeared and traduced; and never again will families have to spend more than three decades campaigning to get truth and justice for their wholly innocent loved ones. There will be more public disasters. There already have been in the intervening time. Hillsborough is an exceptionally bad case, but we can see in other public disasters some of the same problems arising for bereaved families who, through no fault of their own, are caught up in these tragedies—the Grenfell fire and the Manchester arena bombing to name but two. We have already started to see some of the same problems.

So more is needed. The law must be changed. Public authorities must be made to tell the truth. They must be prevented from using all the public money at their disposal to prevent the truth from coming out. Families must be at the heart of subsequent investigations. They must have a collective voice. They must have agency and the capacity to act to get to the truth much sooner than the Hillsborough families were able to.

Hillsborough shows that attempted cover-ups must be torpedoed at an early stage to prevent what happened to the Hillsborough families from happening to others caught up in public disasters. It was not a legal process. It was the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and the publication of documents using freedom of information principles, that finally succeeded in establishing the truth about Hillsborough for all to see, when many legal proceeding for years previously had failed. But it took 23 years.

If we facilitate the capacity for families to get such a process going much sooner, that can help to stop things going so wrong for so long. That is what the Bill intends to achieve. It would establish an independent, adequately resourced public advocate for those bereaved in public disasters, and injured survivors. It would locate the public advocate’s office in a Government Department, able to call on its resources but—crucially—totally independent of Government control and direction. It would require the public advocate to act if 50% plus one or more of the representatives of the deceased and injured survivors ask the advocate to act.

Lord Michael Wills and I have been introducing a Public Advocate Bill into the Commons and the Lords since 2016. That is why this is one is called the Public Advocate (No.2) Bill. It has already been introduced into the Lords this Session by my noble Friend. It would give families agency by putting them at the heart of the response to public disasters through the establishment of the independent public advocate, who, if the bereaved families wish it, and only then, will act as a representative of their interests, advocate and guide. As a data controller, the advocate would be able to establish a panel to review all documentation and produce a report at a much earlier stage than the 23 years it took for Hillsborough. So it would be cheaper and the process would be shorter. That enforced transparency would quickly put a stop to any venal attempts to deflect blame, such as that conducted by South Yorkshire police. Who could successfully conduct such a campaign in the forced glare of transparency, openness and the production of documentation directed by the public advocate at the behest of the families? Cover-ups and the spreading of lies and propaganda could be stopped at an early stage.