Duty of candour and assistance
Public authorities and officials would be required to act with candour, transparency and frankness in their dealings with specified investigations, inquiries and inquests.
An independent public-interest resource
Public Office Accountability
Truth should not require a lifetime of campaigning. When the actions of the state are examined, public bodies should assist the search for truth rather than protect their own position—or pass the unresolved cost to the next generation.
Democracy must include the right to get it wrong. But accountability must give the public the power to get it right.
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A generational responsibility
We owe it not only to our own grandchildren—but to yours too.
Democracy must include the right to get things wrong. But it must also contain the independent tools, institutional courage and public honesty needed to put them right.
The debates we avoid today become the next generation's inheritance tomorrow. A mistake may be human. Preserving it for decades, repeating the same reviews and charging future services for the consequences is a choice.
If we cannot promise our grandchildren a perfect system, we can at least refuse to leave them the same unresolved failures—and the bill for defending them.
The Hillsborough Law
A proposed duty to help establish the truth
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill proposes important duties for public authorities and public officials when dealing with specified inquiries, investigations and inquests.
Widely known as the Hillsborough Law, the Bill seeks to strengthen candour, transparency, ethical conduct and support for people confronting the power of the state.
This page explains the proposals in plain English, why accountability matters, and how a failure to correct mistakes can create avoidable human and financial costs.
What the Bill proposes
Accountability written into public life
The precise legal effect will depend on the final text enacted by Parliament. At present, the principal proposals include:
Misleading the public
The Bill proposes an offence addressing seriously improper conduct by public officials who intentionally or recklessly mislead the public.
Ethical public authorities
Public bodies would be required to promote and maintain appropriate standards of ethical conduct throughout their organisations.
Parity and misconduct reform
The proposals include improved representation for qualifying bereaved families and new statutory offences replacing misconduct in public office.
Accountability is not only about explaining a failure. It should help prevent the next one.
Why it matters to the public purse
When an organisation refuses to recognise an obvious problem, the original mistake can become the smallest part of the eventual cost.
- Complaints and investigations multiply.
- Departments duplicate work and reconstruct missing records.
- Legal and administrative expenditure rises.
- Public trust falls while the underlying problem remains.
- Tomorrow's services pay for yesterday's refusal to act.
An important distinction
The Bill has a defined legal scope
The proposed duty should not be described as making every administrative error, unanswered complaint, delayed information request or disputed council decision a criminal offence.
Its wider importance lies in the standard it represents: public bodies should help establish the truth, act openly when their conduct is examined and correct failures before their consequences grow.
The distance between that principle and everyday public experience deserves careful examination.
Why #FreeNolan matters
Principles need somewhere independent to stand
The Seven Principles of Public Life describe the standards expected of people in public office. They are:
SelflessnessIntegrityObjectivityAccountabilityOpennessHonestyLeadership
In England, the Standards Board regime was abolished in 2012. Local authorities must maintain standards, adopt a code consistent with the Nolan Principles and operate local arrangements for allegations. However, the present statutory regime does not provide a national investigator for councillor-code complaints or the power to suspend a councillor for breaching the code.
#FreeNolan asks a modest but important question: should ethical standards depend so heavily upon where a complaint happens to be made?
England
Codes and complaint arrangements are administered locally. Official reviews have identified variation in the length, quality and clarity of codes, while current legislation provides no suspension sanction for a code breach.
Scotland
The independent Ethical Standards Commissioner investigates councillor-code complaints. The separate Standards Commission can hold public hearings and impose sanctions including suspension or disqualification.
Wales
The Public Services Ombudsman for Wales can investigate allegations and refer justified cases to a local standards committee or the Adjudication Panel for Wales, which can impose sanctions.
Northern Ireland
Allegations about councillors are made to the Northern Ireland Local Government Commissioner for Standards—not to the council—which can investigate and determine cases through adjudication.
Official sources: England · Scotland · Wales · Northern Ireland
The permanent question behind the current Bill
2012–2015: oversight did not disappear. It was broken apart.
During one reform period, England moved both councillor standards and local public audit away from central bodies. The replacement responsibilities survived—but across different local arrangements, laws, regulators and organisations.
Standards for England was abolished
The national Standards Board regime ended under the Localism Act 2011. Sections 27 and 28 placed responsibility on each relevant authority to promote high standards, adopt its own code of conduct and maintain local arrangements for investigating allegations.
Codes must remain consistent with the Seven Principles of Public Life, but England no longer has a national investigator for ordinary councillor-code complaints or the former statutory power to suspend a councillor for a breach.
The Audit Commission’s functions were dispersed
The Commission’s audit practice was outsourced in 2012. The Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 then abolished the Commission and transferred responsibilities into a new framework involving several organisations, private audit firms and local appointment or central procurement arrangements.
The Government later described that replacement system as complex and dysfunctional, with no clear ownership and a backlog that had effectively dismantled part of the early-warning system over local-government finances.
When nobody owns the whole warning system, the warning may arrive after the money has gone.
These reforms do not prove that every later council loss was caused by abolition. They do show that central oversight and enforcement functions were divided or localised. Where ethical complaints, governance concerns and financial warnings remain in separate systems, avoidable failures can continue for longer, corrective action can arrive later and the eventual cost can grow.
Official sources: Localism Act 2011, councillor conduct · Government response on ethical standards · Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 · Government local-audit reform strategy
Reviews, warnings, repetition
When diagnosis becomes a recurring public expense
Three official warnings looked at different parts of public life, yet revealed a familiar concern: ethical principles, public accounts and modern systems are only useful when institutions can turn them into consistent practice.
January 2025
State of Digital Government Review
79% → 68%The Government reported that overall satisfaction with UK public digital services had fallen from 79% to 68% over a decade. It also identified fragmented technology, legacy risks and the costs created by failure demand and additional support.
June 2025
The Nolan Principles at 30
30 yearsThe Committee on Standards in Public Life marked three decades of the Nolan Principles with a national conference examining fragile trust, ethical standards and how public-office holders can maintain them in a changing society.
November 2024 → July 2025
Whole of Government Accounts disclaimed
10% → 4%For the first time, the Comptroller and Auditor General was unable to give an opinion on the UK's Whole of Government Accounts because English local-authority audit omissions and unaudited returns left inadequate assurance over material amounts. The following year's accounts were disclaimed again: adequate audited data from English local authorities fell from approximately 10% to just 4%.
Same problems, renamed. Same warnings, reissued. Same principles, re-announced. The question is not whether another review can describe the problem—it is whether the system will finally alter the design that keeps reproducing it.
Official sources: State of Digital Government Review · The Nolan Principles at 30 · First WGA disclaimer · Second WGA disclaimer
Thirty years in the media
Journalists put the failures on the front page. What happened next?
For three decades, journalists have investigated wrongdoing, tested official explanations and made failures in public life impossible to ignore.
The story was exposed. The public reacted. Reform was promised. Then what?
Evidence reaches the public, the questions become unavoidable and institutions are required to answer in daylight.
Reporting around cash for questions helped produce the Nolan reforms. The parliamentary expenses investigation was followed by independent regulation through IPSA. Journalism can create the moment in which change becomes possible.
The news cycle must move. The responsibility for lasting reform belongs to the institutions with the authority to legislate, enforce standards and prevent the same failure returning under another name.
This is not an argument that journalists should remain on one story forever. It is an argument that public bodies should not wait for another reporter, campaign or scandal before completing the reform already promised.
Public-accountability warning
The national accounts could not be assured
10% → 4%
This was not one late audit or one council's missing paperwork. English local-authority audit failures became extensive enough to prevent assurance over the United Kingdom's Whole of Government Accounts.
November 2024: a first in UK public accounting
The Comptroller and Auditor General issued the first-ever disclaimed opinion on the 2022–23 Whole of Government Accounts. He was unable to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence on which to form an opinion because local-authority audit omissions and unaudited returns were material and pervasive.
- 43 of 426 English local authorities supplied reliable audited data—just over 10%.
- 196 authorities submitted information that had not been audited.
- 187 authorities submitted no data at all.
July 2025: disclaimed again
The 2023–24 Whole of Government Accounts received a second successive disclaimer. Of the 407 English local authorities expected to submit audited information, only 16—approximately 4%—provided adequate audited data.
That distinction matters: the National Audit Office did not refuse to sign every council's individual accounts. The gaps in English local audit were so large that the Comptroller and Auditor General could not provide an opinion on the consolidated accounts of government as a whole.
From legislation to practice
Passing a law is only the beginning
Which bodies, officials and proceedings will be covered?
How will the new duties be understood and enforced?
Will records be preserved well enough for candour to be meaningful?
Will public organisations correct mistakes earlier?
Can accountability reduce avoidable public expenditure?
How will ordinary people know when the duties apply?
And now, the modern stage
Enter RoastMinster
A Tru(LY) Harrowing Story
A modern council play written with professional evidence, profound incredulity and the sort of humour that appears when the official explanation becomes less believable than the satire.
Wasting your council tax defending the indefensible.
RoastMinster does not replace the facts with comedy. It puts the facts on stage. Minutes, policies, complaints, costs, approvals and silences enter as evidence; bureaucracy supplies most of the punchlines itself.
The performance
Shakespearean posture, modern public administration and a machine attempting to calculate how a small error acquired three departments, seven reviews and its own legal budget.
Inside the paperwork
Published records and recognisable processes are reorganised so ordinary residents can see what was said, what was done and what the public eventually paid for.
The serious purpose
To show where early candour, independent oversight and modest procedural changes could prevent disputes, protect services and stop avoidable public waste.
Shakespeare brings people to the stage. RoastMinster shows them what is happening now. YourBard helps stop public money being wasted.