Should officials have a legal duty to tell the truth?

Truth should be the easy bit of public service. Yet Parliament is again asking whether it needs to be written into law.

The Public Office (Accountability) Bill — often called the Hillsborough Law — is at Commons Report stage. Its current version is Bill 007 2026–27, reintroduced at Report stage in May 2026. At its heart is a simple-sounding idea: public authorities and officials should act with candour, transparency and frankness when dealing with inquiries and investigations.

What the Bill would change

The Bill would create a statutory duty of candour for public authorities and public officials. In plainer English: when the state is being investigated, the people acting for it should not hide, spin or dodge the truth.

It would also create new offences, including for public authorities and officials who mislead the public. The Bill goes wider too, requiring public bodies to promote ethical conduct and replacing the old common law offence of misconduct in public office with new statutory offences.

Supporters see this as a response to long campaigns after Hillsborough, Grenfell, infected blood and the Post Office Horizon scandal, where families and victims often had to fight official systems for basic answers. The Bill is meant to shift the burden away from bereaved people having to prise the truth out, one document at a time.

The public mood: low trust, high expectations

There is not, so far, a fresh poll asking this exact question. But the wider trust picture is bleak.

Ipsos’ 2025 Veracity Index found only 9% of Britons trust politicians to tell the truth. Government ministers scored 14%. Even trust in the police, usually much higher than Westminster’s, fell to 51%, its lowest score in that Ipsos series.

An older YouGov poll from 2021 captured the gap neatly: 92% of GB adults said it was important for politicians to tell the truth, but only 17% trusted UK politicians to do so.

That does not settle the legal question. Wanting honesty is easy; designing a fair criminal offence is harder. But it explains why the principle has political force.

The tricky bit: secrets and security

The sharpest argument now is about intelligence services and national security.

The Government has moved to bring intelligence-service staff within the duty, while allowing service heads to withhold security or intelligence information in defined circumstances. Some MPs from several parties want those carve-outs removed or narrowed, arguing that exemptions could weaken the whole point of the law. A Conservative amendment would require the Intelligence and Security Committee to examine parts of the intelligence-service provisions before they start.

There is another limit: the Government has said the duty would not apply retrospectively. So it would not reopen past conduct under the new law, even where current inquiries raise uncomfortable questions.

On BugBen so far, our tiny early panel is strongly in favour: 83% for and 17% against, from 6 votes. That is not a national poll, but it is a sign of where our readers are leaning.

Should public officials face a legal duty to tell the truth? Have your say by voting on the question on BugBen.