It was meant to be a triumphant moment. After almost 16 months of briefing from Whitehall sources that Keir Starmer would never be able to keep his promise to introduce the Hillsborough law, the prime minister was introduced at the Labour conference by Margaret Aspinall.
Aspinall, whose son James, 18, was one of the 97 people killed in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, has with other bereaved families fought ever since against police lies, and for the truth and justice, confronting many false promises – and a lot of prime ministers.
But on stage in Liverpool she praised Starmer, saying he “was the only person to pledge the Hillsborough law and he’s been the only person to fulfil it and see it through”.
“This party was founded to hear working-class people,” Starmer said to a standing ovation in Liverpool. The Hillsborough law, he said, was “a recognition … that in the Britain that we are building, the state will see, the state will listen, the state will be accountable to working people because now – injustice has no place to hide.”
So much did Starmer seek to take ownership of the law, that he personally introduced it in the House of Commons at second reading, a highly unusual move, but one that seemed to be a rare light for Labour MPs used to months of gloom, that the party was finally leading the right moral charge.
How did it come to this, four months later, that families whose relatives died at Hillsborough, and in the 2017 terrorist bombing of the Manchester Arena, were locked in talks with the prime minister and then walked away saying they could not support the law? Starmer himself spent 90 minutes in his Commons office with family members – including Aspinall – and the law’s architect, Pete Weatherby KC. He represented bereaved families at the 2014-16 Hillsborough inquests and the public inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing, in which 22 people were killed at an Ariana Grande concert.
Central to the disagreement was how the duty of candour in the public office (accountability) bill would apply to serving intelligence officers. The law meant those in public office who lie or evade would face prosecution. The government had agreed the legislation should cover the security services, but wanted to give agency chiefs the final say over when individual officers could give evidence, a power the families said was unacceptable and could lead to future cover-ups.
With the threat of a significant Labour rebellion that built over the weekend, and bereaved families denouncing the law that was promised as the positive legacy from their traumas, the bill has been pulled with no timeline for its return. Government sources told the Guardian it would not return until an agreement was reached with the families. There is an acceptance it may not be done by the time of the king’s speech in the spring.
The conflict at the heart of the bill is a perfect metaphor for the twin influences on Starmer – the campaigning human rights lawyer who took on vested interests and corporations, and then the director of public prosecutions, close to the security state and who prosecuted terrorists, who has made Labour credible on issues of national security.
In the background, the security services have done their own fierce lobbying, including briefings to wavering MPs on the risk the law would pose to active operations or key assets. They say that without giving security services chiefs the final say over evidence that goes to an official inquiry, it could put national security at risk. For now, the government seems convinced of this argument.
The families say they have always fully accepted the need to accommodate national security concerns, and assess whether evidence relating to intelligence can safely be made public at an inquiry. But they insist that the new law’s duty of candour must apply to individual officers. It would be for the chair of an inquiry to hear an application from MI5 bosses if they believe some information should be withheld on national security grounds.
The difference between the two sides can seem paper thin – but the families’ insistence is rooted in recent experience. At the Manchester Arena inquiry, MI5 submitted an inaccurate account of intelligence it had that might have prevented the bombing.
MI5 told the inquiry that two pieces of intelligence on the bomber were not assessed by officers at the time to relate to a terrorism or national security threat. However, when the MI5 officers gave evidence themselves, it became clear that in fact they had considered there were potential implications for national security.
The inquiry chair, John Saunders, said of MI5’s evidence in his 2023 final report: “I do not consider that these statements present an accurate picture.”
He concluded: “In my view, [the second] piece of intelligence gave rise to the real possibility of obtaining information that might have led to actions which prevented the attack. We cannot know what would have happened, but there is at least the material possibility that opportunities to intervene were missed.”
That devastating conclusion, and the fact that it would not have been exposed if the individual officers had not given evidence, informs the families’ determination that the duty of candour provisions must fully apply to the security services.
Jenni Hicks, whose daughters, Sarah, 19, and Vicki, 15, were killed in the Hillsborough disaster, had a personal meeting with the justice minister, Alex Davies-Jones, in parliament on Monday.
“I told her 80% is not good enough, 90% is not good enough, it has to be 100%,” Hicks said. “The security services have to have the same scrutiny as everybody else. I told her that if it wasn’t 100% Hillsborough law, I wanted my daughters’ names taken off it. There can be no exclusions. Everybody has to tell the truth in cases of disasters, no cover-ups.”
One minister close to the talks said there was an acceptance it would be a long process of negotiation and that the families would clearly not accept further tweaks being made in the Lords – so there was no option but to press pause on the parliamentary process.
“Deadlines won’t work this time,” one government source said. “We’ll land when we land. They want to be constructive with us. But every single tiny incremental steps have to be negotiated with families, but also the mayors, the ISC [intelligence and security committee], the agency heads, the Home Office, the Foreign Office. But we hope to make progress, it just might take many turns of the wheel.”
There is frustration and anguish among many Labour MPs. “How can he make the commitment and not make sure it is delivered?” one said.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was said to have been ready to pull his support for the law entirely should the government press on with its amendment. MPs and ministers were making deeply aggrieved complaints to No 10, including to the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.
“The PM has staked his personal reputation on this,” one MP said. “He cannot afford for this to collapse.”
