LONDON – A law intended to prevent police and other officials from covering up errors and wrongdoing is set to be approved by British lawmakers on Tuesday, 37 years after the country’s deadliest sports tragedy sparked a campaign for justice.
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill imposes a legal duty of candor on public officials to tell the truth about public tragedies whatever the impact on their reputation.
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The legislation is more commonly known as the Hillsborough Law, after the 1989 disaster in which 97 Liverpool soccer fans were killed in a crush at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. An independent inquiry in 2012 found police had covered up their own mistakes and blamed the deaths on unruly supporters.
The bill is due to complete passage through the House of Commons on Tuesday after a delay caused by wrangling over whether it would apply to Britain’s spies. After pressure from bereaved families, the government has agreed that intelligence services will be covered by the duty of candor, but with a “secure process” for disclosing information if it could affect national security.
The bill will become law after being approved by the House of Lords, Parliament's upper chamber.
Outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who promised to bring in the law during his 2024 election campaign, is due to open debate on the bill in the Commons on Tuesday in one of his final acts as leader.
His successor Andy Burnham, who is due to take over as prime minister on Monday, has long campaigned on behalf of the bereaved families.
“We owe this moment to the Hillsborough families,” Burnham wrote in the Liverpool Echo. “For 37 years, they refused to accept a lie. They stood firm when powerful institutions closed ranks against them.
“They have shown extraordinary courage, and because they never gave up, they will leave a legacy that reaches far beyond Hillsborough. They are helping to reshape the relationship between the public and the state for generations to come.”
The 54,000-capacity Hillsborough stadium was nearly full for a match against Nottingham Forest on April 15, 1989 when more than 2,000 Liverpool fans were allowed to pour into a standing-only section behind a goal. The victims were smashed against metal fences or trampled underfoot, and many suffocated.
The death toll includes one fan who died in 2021 as a result of his injuries.
With hooliganism rife in English soccer in the 1980s, a narrative blaming drunken, ticketless and rowdy Liverpool fans was created by police, and was only overturned by years of campaigning by victims’ families.
An original inquest in 1991 found the deaths were accidental, a conclusion victims’ families refused to accept. Those findings were overturned in 2012 after a far-reaching inquiry into the disaster that examined previously secret documents and exposed wrongdoing and mistakes by police.
In 2016, a jury at a second inquest found the victims had been “unlawfully killed” as a result of failings by police, the ambulance service and Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, which ran the stadium. It found the behavior of fans did not contribute to the deaths.
In 2023 the government apologized for the way the families were treated over the decades and for the delay in its response to the report.
An investigation by the police watchdog concluded last year that 12 officers would have faced gross misconduct proceedings, were they not dead or long retired.