The quiet clauses of the Hillsborough Law, part one: position statements
Inquiries Perspective
Jon Clements, Chief Executive
Charlotte Phillips, Partner (Communication)
15 October 2026
Most commentary on the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, now before the Lords, has focused on the duty of candour in general terms and on the new criminal offences. Less has been said about the position statement, which is among the first things the duty would require an organisation to produce. This is the first of two pieces on the Bill's ‘quieter clauses’, drawing on our experiences supporting inquiries and inquests over the last decade. The second (published next week) looks at inquests, where legal aid for bereaved families and position statements arrive together. Candour is the purpose of the Bill, and nothing we say here treats candour as a risk to be managed. Our interest is in what it will ask of the people who have to deliver it.
What the Bill would require
Once the chair or coroner issues a compliance direction, a public authority must provide a position statement, defined simply as a statement of its position on matters relevant to the inquiry or investigation. The obligation is not confined to the public sector. It reaches private bodies carrying out public functions, bodies with a health and safety responsibility towards the people affected, and contractors working directly for a public authority, for example in a prison or an NHS setting. An inquiry chair may dispense with it only where it would hinder the efficient and effective conduct of the inquiry, and must give reasons.
Position statements are not new. Coroners have increasingly asked organisations for them, and inquiries have long received opening statements. What changes is the standard. A public authority must act without favouring its own position, its chief executive must take all reasonable steps to secure compliance, and failure can be a criminal offence carrying up to two years' imprisonment.
The end of saying as little as possible
Today, nothing obliges an organisation under scrutiny to give its own account at the outset. At an inquiry it can open with sympathy and a promise of cooperation, or with a detailed statement that concedes nothing. That reticence may have suited some organisations, because it put off difficult conversations with staff, partners and others. It has rarely served the people affected.
A candid early statement changes that. If an NHS trust, an emergency service, police force or government department must say where it believes it went wrong, it is also, by implication, saying something about who got it wrong. A workforce that already feels bruised by media coverage may hear its own leadership pointing the finger. Candour towards the inquiry is not something to be traded against duty of care to staff, so how will leaders meet both? The inquiry will, by definition, receive the statement first. The harder question is when and how the organisation tells its other audiences what to expect, and then what has been said. How does it make sure its own workforce, for example, does not learn of significant admissions or concessions from a news alert or social media? How do leaders prepare themselves for the challenging discussions which may follow?
A legal document that becomes the public record
Staff are only one audience. A position statement is drafted for a chair or a coroner, but it will be read by the bereaved and survivors, customers, regulators, funders, ministers and, for contractors, investors. Has each of them been told what is coming, and what it does (and doesn't) mean for them?
Once given, the statement becomes the organisation's account for every audience. Everything else it says, in a staff briefing, a press line or an annual report, will be measured against it. Saying one thing to an inquiry and something softer elsewhere would not be candour. An organisation can, and under the Bill must, correct errors as evidence emerges. What it cannot credibly do is suggest it did not quite mean what it said.
That makes it a reference point. Families, journalists and politicians will hold the organisation to it, and rightly so. The media has always been drawn to the split, where the institution says one thing and someone inside it says another. What happens when a key witness does not accept the organisation's stated position, or when staff associations or unions disagree and go public? Individuals have their own duty of candour and may see events differently. Senior individuals may seek separate representation more often.
Tone matters as much as content. Among the first to read a position statement closely will be bereaved families and survivors. Language chosen only for legal precision could read as cold or evasive to them, however candid the substance. That is not a reason to soften what is said. It is a reason to say it plainly and humanely, so that candour is recognised as candour. Who, alongside the lawyers, is reading the draft with those readers in mind? And what is the scope here for a genuinely trauma-informed approach to communication?
More heat at the opening
In 2018, Richard Millett KC, counsel to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, asked core participants not to indulge in a "merry-go-round of buck-passing". By January 2020 he was telling the chair and panel that the invitation had not been accepted. His target was mainly private contractors. Under the Bill most of those firms would probably be caught by the duty, and so obliged to set out their position without favouring it. A risk remains at the margins: a body outside those categories could stay silent while those around it must be candid.
Either way, more will be said earlier, by more parties, in documents that journalists, commentators and politicians can quote. Bereaved families and survivors will, quite legitimately, respond to position statements on the day they are given. How will chairs, secretariats and legal teams keep proceedings fair and focused on the evidence when participants are also responding to one another in public, before a witness has been called? An organisation that takes responsibility early does right by the people affected, and may lower the temperature for everyone. But that takes real leadership.
What to do now
The duty of candour would apply to inquiries already under way when the Act is passed. Public bodies already involved should decide now who owns the position statement, who reads it with families in mind, how staff and partners will hear what it says, and how differences between the organisation and individuals will be handled. Inquiry teams and coroners should plan for a 'louder' opening, and for scrutiny that starts before the evidence does.
Organisations with no inquiry or inquest in prospect should prepare too, so they are not caught on the hop. The Bill would require them to act expeditiously once the duty applies, which leaves little time to work out from scratch who does what. Boards and senior teams can start now. They can make sure leaders and staff understand what the duty would ask of them, train the people most likely to be involved, and check that they know where their records are held. And they can work through realistic scenarios to test how the organisation would establish the facts, support its people, and tell families, staff and partners what it knows.
None of this is a bad thing
Nothing here is an argument against the Bill. It exists for good reason: too many families have met defensiveness where they were owed the truth.
The Bill would make the chief executive personally responsible for securing compliance. That will naturally weigh heavily, but it is also a mandate. The answer to this level of scrutiny is not to bob, weave or spin. It is for leaders to face the facts as they establish them, to own them, and to explain what they mean promptly, accurately, confidently and consistently to every audience.
That mandate does not begin on the day an inquiry is announced. The Bill also requires public authorities to adopt a code of ethical conduct and to promote candour among their own staff at all times. This is a moment for every organisation to reflect, and to commit to ethical conduct and candour now, before anything has gone wrong. Those that do will serve the public better. In doing so, they will also give themselves the best chance of never having to write a position statement at all.
