The Hillsborough Law is moving toward approval after decades of campaigning by bereaved families who fought to stop public bodies hiding the truth after state failure.

The Public Office Accountability Bill would create a new legal duty of candour for public officials and public authorities. It is designed to require honesty, transparency and cooperation during investigations, inquests and inquiries where public institutions are under scrutiny.

The bill is rooted in the long aftermath of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 97 Liverpool supporters died after a crush at the FA Cup semi-final. Families spent decades challenging official narratives, police failings and institutional defensiveness before the victims were fully exonerated.

The proposed law is intended to make it harder for public authorities to mislead families, frustrate investigations or protect institutional reputation at the expense of truth.

The bill is about more than one disaster. It is about whether the state can ever again hide behind delay, denial and institutional power.

Supporters argue that the duty of candour is necessary because ordinary families should not have to fight the full weight of the state simply to establish what happened to their loved ones. They say too many tragedies have been followed by slow disclosure, defensive legal tactics and a culture of institutional self-protection.

The bill also speaks to wider concerns beyond Hillsborough. Public inquiries and inquests after disasters, deaths in custody, healthcare failures, policing failures and major public-safety incidents often depend on whether officials disclose information fully and early.

The legal detail matters. A duty of candour must be strong enough to change behaviour, but clear enough that officials understand what it requires. The bill has also faced debate over how it should apply to intelligence and national-security agencies.

For campaigners, however, the principle is straightforward: public service should come with a duty to tell the truth.

The passage of the bill would not undo the decades of pain endured by the Hillsborough families. Nor would it guarantee that every future investigation is simple or swift.

But it would mark a major shift in the relationship between citizens and the state.

After years in which families were forced to demand truth from institutions that resisted them, the law would place that obligation where campaigners say it always belonged: on the public bodies themselves.