The House of Commons has moved to pass the Hillsborough Law, a change that its backers describe as one of the most significant shifts in how the country holds public bodies to account. According to the account, MPs were on course to approve the legislation on Tuesday evening, with the families at the heart of the long campaign behind it watching from the chamber as the moment they had fought for finally arrived.
The measure was cast in sweeping terms by those who championed it. According to the account, one of its leading advocates, Andy Burnham, told the Commons that it was a momentous piece of legislation that would change the way the country thinks and works about justice, describing it as a rewiring of the state and a passing of power from the authorities into the hands of ordinary people.
Supporters framed the vote as the settling of a long-standing debt. According to the account, they said the law would rebalance the scales of justice so that ordinary people would have justice going forward, and credited the Prime Minister with honouring a commitment he had made to the Hillsborough families over what was held up as a defining part of his government's programme.
The families themselves were central to the moment. According to the account, they were present in the chamber for the vote, supported by the wider group of campaigns brought together under the banner of Hillsborough Law Now, the movement that grew out of the long fight for accountability following the disaster that gave the law its name.
One of the campaign's founders captured what set the effort apart. According to the account, it was noted that, as Steve Rotherham had put it, the Hillsborough Law could do no more for the Hillsborough families themselves, but that it would do much more for those who come after them, a point held up as proof that the families had pursued the change for the benefit of others rather than for themselves.
The lawyers who guided the campaign through the legal thicket were also singled out for thanks. According to the account, Pete Weatherby KC and Elkin Abrahamsen KC were among those recognised in the chamber, alongside the bereaved relatives and survivors whose persistence, MPs said, was the reason the legislation had reached this point at all after years of pressure.
Those behind the law were quick to point beyond Hillsborough itself. According to the account, they hoped the legislation would lift a string of other long-running campaigns, naming the survivors and families of the Grenfell Tower fire, who are still waiting for justice and accountability, and the families connected to a Chinook helicopter case who were in court on the same day.
Another group was drawn into the debate as well. According to the account, tribute was paid to servicemen who took part in nuclear tests in the South Pacific in the post-war period and who, it was argued, had been left without truth and justice for what happened to them, with a call made for a special tribunal to examine their case as the House prepared to send the Hillsborough Law on its way.
The law carries the weight of a tragedy nearly four decades old. According to the account, it takes its name from the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 97 people were killed at the Sheffield Wednesday ground during a match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, after which police leaders were found to have spread false narratives blaming Liverpool supporters while withholding evidence of their own failings. Formally the public office accountability bill, the measure is designed to prevent that kind of cover-up by placing a duty of candour on public officials.
The vote marked a milestone rather than the finish line. According to the account, the legislation was completing its passage through the House of Commons at its third reading on Tuesday evening and still has to go to the House of Lords, which may take it up next week, before it can become law. Supporters said it was firmly on course to reach the statute book, with the mood of the House strongly behind it, even as opponents moved amendments seeking to water down the duty of candour and the government overrode objections from security chiefs who had sought to be exempt from its terms.
The moment was also notable for who delivered its defining speech. According to the account, it was Andy Burnham's first speech in the Commons since 2017, coming as he is expected to be made his party's leader within days and to take office as Prime Minister shortly afterwards, and he used it to praise the outgoing Prime Minister he is set to succeed for having made the law happen. Among the families watching from the gallery was Margaret Aspinall, a long-standing figure in the campaign, whom the Prime Minister had received in the Downing Street garden earlier in the day.