Teesside politician wants MPs lying to become criminal offence
Labour MP hopes to make amendment to Hillsborough Law
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Leigh
A Teesside MP has tabled an amendment to legislation in Parliament which would make it a criminal offence for MPs or members of the House of Lords to lie to the public.
Labour’s Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP, Luke Myer, has made an amendment to the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, also known as the Hillsborough Law.
The bill was due to be voted on in Parliament later today (14th January), but a last minute change to the schedule yesterday means it will now be debated on Monday. As it stands would make it an offence for senior politicians like the Prime Minister or cabinet ministers to deliberately mislead the public.
Mr Myer’s amendment would make it a criminal offence for any MP to be caught lying.
Amendments to bills are chosen for debate by the Speaker shortly before the debate begins. There’s no guarantee the proposed amendment will make it to the debate.
Campaigners have backed the Hillsborough Law since the 2016 inquests into the 1989 disaster which saw 97 football fans killed. In the aftermath of the disaster, South Yorkshire Police lied about the sequence of events and altered witness statements to remove any critical comments about themselves.
The government was forced to issue an apology in 2012.
Those inquests between 2014 and 2016 revealed how the public authorities involved in the deaths of the Liverpool supporters - who were all entirely absolved of any blame - were under no obligation to co-operate with them.
The new legislation aims to put right that injustice, by imposing a duty on public authorities and officials to act with “candour, transparency and frankness” and establish offences to prosecute those who mislead the public or engage in misconduct relating to their duties as public officials.
In the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster, Conservative MP for Sheffield Hallam Irvine Patnick passed false information from South Yorkshire Police to the press.
The think tank Compassion in Politics has led a seven year campaign for a law against lying in politics. Their CEO, Jennifer Nadel said: “When lies travel faster than the truth, democracy becomes dangerously easy to game. This amendment is about drawing a clear line: deliberately deceiving the public in order to gain or retain power is not politics as usual, it is an abuse of trust.
“If we want to rebuild faith in democracy and bring disillusioned voters back into the system, honesty in public life has to mean something in law, not just in principle.”
The amendment has been supported by Green Party and Plaid Cymru MPs. Former Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price attempted to make it a crime for politicians to lie when he was an MP in 2007 to try to impeach Tony Blair for the Iraq war.
This week the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) debated a bill to make it a criminal offence for politicians to lie.
The delay to the final vote on the proposed legislation in Westminster happened after an internal argument among Labour MPs over provisions in the Hillsborough law relating to security officials from MI5 and MI6.
Ben Houchen!
Let's hope beyond hope this amendment is included on Monday. I am thankful to you Leigh for reporting on this important point. In the days of The Traitors tv series helping to lower our trust in people generally then it is refreshing to read of the stand by Luke Myers, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, to try to restore trust in the words and actions of our political overlords!