Bosses of suppliers that provide services to government should be included in the scope of the law designed to get public servants to tell the truth, according to Post Office scandal and Capita pension fiasco campaigners.
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which will make a lack of candour, transparency and frankness in public office a criminal offence, is currently making its way through Parliament. While the law – designed to avoid another Hillsborough scandal – is welcomed, there are calls for bosses at private sector suppliers to the government, as well as public officials already included, to be within its scope.
The Post Office scandal has revealed a fine line between the UK public and private sectors, which should be addressed in the bill designed to make public officials tell the truth.
Bosses at Fujitsu, which supplied the controversial Horizon computer system at the centre of the scandal, like Post Office executives and government officials, were not transparent about the system’s problems. This led to thousands of people being wrongly blamed for account shortfalls and hundreds wrongly convicted of financial crimes. Had Fujitsu publicly admitted to system errors, many lives could have avoided the devastation of the scandal.
Campaigners were thwarted when making efforts to get to the truth for many years, and were forced into a massive and costly legal action to force the truth out.
During a House of Lords debate on the bill, James Arbuthnot, who has campaigned for nearly two decades for subpostmasters caught up in the Horizon scandal, asked: “How, precisely, would the bill extend to Fujitsu, that glorious company which has paid not a penny of compensation and which remains on the government’s list of companies to do business with?”
Meanwhile, former civil servants affected by the ongoing civil service pension scheme (CSPS) problems, related to Capita’s failings, have called for “every private company or organisation delivering services under a government contract”.
Thousands of former civil servants and their spouses have had to seek emergency loans as Capita has failed to pay pensions to many for almost a year since it took over the CSPS administration in December.
The Pensions Before Profit Campaigns Group, set up as part of a Facebook-based community of thousands of effected civil servants, said: “There must be a statutory duty of candour, consistent with the principles of the Hillsborough Law, covering government departments and every private company or organisation delivering services under a government contract.”
It added: “They must be required to provide Parliament, ministers and the public with information that is honest, complete and timely; disclose failures openly; and correct inaccurate or misleading statements immediately.
It said CSPS members have been “gaslighted, dismissed or told that their documented experiences are wrong simply because they contradict a contractor’s preferred statistics”.
“Public services cannot be accountable while those responsible are permitted to conceal problems, minimise failures or shift blame without consequence,” it said. “A duty of candour must carry meaningful sanctions for organisations and senior individuals who knowingly mislead, withhold information or fail to correct the record.”
The official long title of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, widely known as the Hillsborough Law, is: “A bill to impose a duty on public authorities and public officials to act with candour, transparency and frankness; to make provision for the enforcement of that duty in their dealings with inquiries and investigations; to require public authorities to promote and take steps to maintain ethical conduct within all parts of the authority; to create an offence in relation to public authorities and public officials who mislead the public; to create further offences in relation to the misconduct of persons who hold public office and to abolish the common law offence of misconduct in public office; to make provision enabling persons to participate at inquiries and investigations where the conduct of public authorities may be in issue; and for connected purposes.”
Complexity
However, Arbuthnot said that including suppliers is not straightforward. “There are arguments on both sides,” he said. “Against extending the law, you might wonder where it would end, and whether bringing in unspecified third parties might lose the focus of the bill, so that it might be better, say, to change the laws of contract and of perjury to achieve these ends. You might also say that the “Hillsborough Law” was so named because of bad behaviour by officialdom, and that is what it is aimed at.
There is also a risk that public servants could hide behind suppliers when avoiding providing information. During the Post Office scandal, the Post Office relied on false statements from Fujitsu that claimed the Horizon system was robust.
Former subpostmaster and campaigner Sir Alan Bates, who experienced years of deflection from public authorities, recently told Computer Weekly that the law will have to be carefully introduced because the civil service has had “hundreds of years of experience in avoidance, and twisting and turning without actually lying”.
