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The government is to delay the progress of the Hillsborough law while ministers thrash out a compromise, amid concerns from MPs and families over how it will apply to serving intelligence officers.
The bill will enforce a duty of candour on public officials and contractors to tell the truth in the aftermath of disasters. But concerns were raised by campaigners that it went too far in protecting individual employees of the intelligence agencies who might have misled public inquiries or investigations.
The government made a series of amendments to the bill on Friday to try to allay concerns, but is understood to be considering further changes after MPs said they could lose the support of victims.
More than 20 Labour MPs, including the Merseyside MPs Ian Byrne and Anneliese Midgley, had backed amendments to the bill to place specific duties of candour on intelligence officers. The bill was meant to return to the Commons on Wednesday but will now be delayed until next week.
Last week the families affected by the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, where Salman Abedi killed 22 people in a suicide attack at an Ariana Grande concert, wrote to Keir Starmer saying Security Service officers should not be exempt from the new law.
In the letter, they said the inquiry had found the deadly attack could have been stopped if MI5 had acted on crucial intelligence.
“MI5 failed our loved ones and failed us. It did so by failing to prevent the Arena bombing. But it then failed and hurt us further through its lack of candour after the attack,” they said in the letter first reported by the BBC.
“During the Manchester Arena inquiry, MI5 lied about the key intelligence it held about the suicide bomber before the attack. Despite MI5 lying to a public inquiry in this way, no one has been held to account. This lack of accountability needs to change. Creating a full duty of candour responsibility on MI5, MI6 and GCHQ is the clearest route to creating this change.”
Some of the Manchester Arena families are due to meet Starmer on Wednesday, along with Margaret Aspinall, the Hillsborough campaigner who knows the prime minister well and introduced him at last autumn’s Labour conference.
On Tuesday, the prime minister’s spokesperson said the government was considering amendments to the bill but said there could not be a compromise on national security.
“Since we introduced the bill, we’ve worked with the families to make this duty as strong as it can possibly be whilst never compromising on national security. This government will not bring forward legislation that would put the national security of the UK or lives at risk,” he said.
“On Friday, we brought forward a series of amendments to address concerns that the bill did not apply to individual employees of the intelligence agencies. But we’re determined to get this right.”
He said ministers could consider further changes and the bill would be delayed by a week in parliament. “We continue to listen to stakeholders on all sides of the debate, make sure the bill strikes the careful balance that’s required, and for that reason, remaining stages of the bill have been moved to next week,” he said.
“If we feel that further amendments are needed to ensure we strike the balance between bringing about change needed without risking the national security of the UK, then we will bring forward those amendments.”
The government said there would still be new duties on the intelligence services not to mislead or evade. “This law will change the balance of power. It will mean that the duty of candour will apply to the intelligence services,” the spokesperson said.
Campaigners and MPs have said the law should place the duty on individual security and intelligence officers to tell the truth, and that the leaders of the organisations should also bear full responsibility.
