The new Public Office (Accountability) Bill—known as the Hillsborough law and named after the football stadium disaster—promises to help prevent coverups in the public sector, including the NHS.
The health service is no stranger to scandal, with a recurring theme being the time it takes authorities to find out what went wrong.
Robert Francis provided one answer in his 2013 report on serious harm to patients at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which found that failures at every level allowed the “terrible and unnecessary suffering” of patients to go undetected for years.
“For all the fine words printed and spoken about candour, and willingness to remedy wrongs, there lurks within the system an institutional instinct which, under pressure, will prefer concealment, formulaic responses, and avoidance of criticism,” Francis concluded.12
Such an instinct was a factor in the long journey for justice for those killed and injured in the 1989 football ground crush at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield. It took 27 years before an inquest jury finally ruled the 97 victims were unlawfully killed and that the fans—contrary to the police allegations—bore no responsibility for …
