The Public Office (Accountability) Bill, commonly known as the Hillsborough Law, is one of the most consequential accountability reforms currently before the UK Parliament. Although it has not yet completed its legislative journey, the Bill will impact how public bodies think about transparency, disclosure and legal strategy during inquests and inquiries. For any legal professionals or those working in higher and further education or advising public-facing organisations, its implications are significant.
Introduced in September 2025, the Bill reflects decades of criticism following major public tragedies, where public authorities were accused of withholding information, adopting adversarial legal tactics and failing to engage honestly with bereaved families. Hillsborough, Grenfell and Windrush are repeatedly cited as examples where institutional defensiveness compounded harm and delayed justice.
What the Bill is trying to change
At its core, the Bill seeks to shift how public bodies behave when things go wrong. Rather than reacting defensively to investigations, the legislation aims to impose a statutory expectation of openness and cooperation.
The central mechanism for achieving this is a new duty of candour and assistance. This duty would require public authorities and officials to act in a way that is “truthful, accurate and helpful” when engaging with inquiries, inquests and external investigations. Crucially, this is not a passive obligation. Organisations would be expected to proactively identify and disclose relevant information, rather than waiting for formal requests or relying on narrow interpretations of relevance
The intention is cultural as much as legal. The Bill is designed to discourage the kind of institutional behaviour where disclosure is minimised, delayed or filtered through purely reputational concerns.
Who the duty applies to and why scope matters
The Bill’s scope is deliberately broad. It applies not only to ministers, government departments and emergency services, but also to NHS bodies, local authorities, universities and further education institutions. In addition, private organisations carrying out public functions or public contracts are brought within scope.
This matters for higher education in particular. Universities are increasingly involved in coroner’s inquests following student deaths and serious incidents, often alongside NHS trusts or local authorities. Under the proposed duty of candour, universities would be expected to engage with those processes far more openly than is currently the norm.
Information held internally, including welfare records, disability support arrangements, safeguarding concerns or evidence of process failures, would need to be proactively disclosed where relevant. The days of waiting for families or coroners to request specific documents are likely to end.
The specific impact on higher and further education institutions
Under the proposed duty of candour, HE and FE institutions would be under a statutory obligation to engage openly and proactively with these processes. That includes identifying and disclosing information that may be relevant to the circumstances of a death or serious incident, even where doing so may expose institutional failings.
This could include, for example, evidence of unmet disability adjustments, gaps in mental health or wellbeing support, failures in referral or escalation processes, or internal communications that demonstrate missed opportunities to intervene. The expectation would be that such information is disclosed to the coroner or sheriff without waiting for formal requests from the court or the family.
The Bill also signals a broader cultural expectation that principles of candour should be reflected internally. For HE and FE institutions, this may translate into changes to staff codes of conduct, clearer disciplinary consequences for obstructive behaviour, stronger whistleblowing protections and more explicit accountability for senior leaders responsible for student welfare and safeguarding.
From a compliance perspective, this raises difficult operational questions. Institutions will need to ensure that their governance, record-keeping and investigation processes are capable of identifying relevant information quickly and reliably. Fragmented systems across academic departments, student services and wellbeing teams will become a liability if information cannot be pulled together coherently under time pressure.
What changes for inquests and families
Another major reform introduced by the Bill concerns legal representation at inquests. The legislation expands access to non-means-tested legal aid for bereaved families whenever a public authority is designated as an interested person. This is intended to address the long-standing imbalance where public bodies routinely appear with legal teams while families must self-fund or crowdfund representation .
At the same time, the Bill places limits on public bodies’ use of lawyers at inquests. Authorities will be required to justify that their legal representation is necessary and proportionate. This has important implications for compliance and legal teams, who will need to rethink default approaches to inquest participation and be prepared to explain their strategy to coroners and, potentially, the public.
New offences and personal accountability
The Bill also reforms how misconduct by public officials is defined and enforced. It abolishes the long-criticised common law offence of misconduct in public office and replaces it with two new statutory offences, each designed to address a different category of failure.
The first offence covers wilful or seriously improper conduct by a public official in the exercise of their functions. This is intended to capture deliberate wrongdoing, reckless disregard of duties or conduct that falls far below the standards expected of someone in a position of public trust. By placing this offence on a statutory footing, the Bill aims to remove uncertainty around the scope of misconduct and make enforcement more consistent.
The second offence is narrower but potentially more serious. It applies where a public official fails to prevent death or serious harm in circumstances where they owed a duty to act. This offence is focused less on intent and more on omission, targeting situations where known risks were not escalated, acted upon or mitigated despite clear responsibility and authority to intervene.
Together, these offences significantly raise the stakes. They are expected to carry penalties of up to 10 and 14 years imprisonment.
The unresolved question of legal professional privilege
One of the most sensitive aspects of the Bill is its interaction with legal professional privilege. The legislation does not explicitly override privilege and, in formal legal terms, privilege remains intact. However, the new duty of candour significantly changes the context in which privilege is asserted.
Public bodies that withhold information on privilege grounds will likely face far greater scrutiny from inquiry chairs, coroners and the media. Assertions of privilege will need to be carefully justified and documented. Relying on privilege as a routine shield against disclosure may become untenable where it appears to conflict with the spirit of candour the Bill seeks to enforce .
This creates real tension for in-house lawyers and compliance officers, who must balance legal rights against ethical expectations and reputational risk. There is also wider concern that repeated political criticism of privilege in public inquiries could influence how privilege is perceived across other regulated sectors, including the legal profession itself.
Strengthened powers for coroners and inquiry chairs
The Bill also shifts the balance of power decisively towards coroners, sheriffs and inquiry chairs. These bodies are expected to take a more active role in testing not only what information has been disclosed, but why certain information has not. Public authorities may be required to explain the reasoning behind disclosure decisions, delays or omissions, including the internal processes used to identify relevant material. For HE and FE institutions, this means that engagement with inquests and inquiries is likely to become more searching and less deferential. Assertions that information was overlooked, unavailable or deemed irrelevant will be examined closely, with limited tolerance for weak governance or unclear accountability.
Internal investigations under a duty of candour
One of the most significant operational impacts of the Bill concerns internal investigations. Many public bodies, including universities, routinely commission internal reviews following serious incidents, often structured to preserve legal privilege and control risk. Under a statutory duty of candour, those approaches may need to change. The timing, scope and framing of internal investigations are likely to come under scrutiny, particularly where they appear to delay disclosure or shape narratives ahead of external scrutiny. Compliance teams will need to ensure that internal investigations are designed to surface facts quickly and accurately, rather than to manage exposure. Processes that prioritise defensibility over transparency may themselves become a source of criticism under the new regime.
Where the Bill stands now
As of early 2026, the Public Office (Accountability) Bill has not yet completed its passage through Parliament. Progress has slowed due to political disagreement over proposed exemptions, particularly in relation to the intelligence services. These debates have delayed implementation, though there remains broad consensus on the need for stronger transparency and accountability mechanisms.
The core duty of candour provisions are expected to survive, even if the final version of the Bill is amended.
Key takeaways for compliance leaders
Proactive transparency will be required of public bodies and institutions with public functions.
Legal privilege remains legally intact, yet will face practical pressure under the duty of candour.
HE/FE institutions must review policies and train staff to respond to inquiries and inquests with candour.
Legal aid expansion will change inquest dynamics, requiring strategic legal engagement.
Risk frameworks should be updated to reflect potential criminal offences and reputational risks from non-compliance.
