The Hillsborough Law has passed the Commons. It doesn’t yet apply to the everyday work of universities, but I’d suggest the sector doesn’t wait. For those of us who run investigations and disciplinary processes, candour is a standard worth adopting in our most serious casework, whether the law is extended to us or not.
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill passed the House of Commons in July 2026 and is now with the Lords. At its centre is a statutory duty of candour; a legal expectation that public bodies and officials are open, correct the record when they get things wrong, and do not act to protect their own position when something has gone wrong.
Most of the coverage has focused on inquiries and inquests, which is where the duty is strongest. But for those of us who conduct casework in higher education we may ask: if candour became an expectation for the everyday work of universities, what would it ask of an investigation or a disciplinary process?
The position of universities now
The Bill has two parts that are relevant:
- The first covers candour at inquests and inquiries. If a student dies and a coroner opens an investigation, the university and its senior officers would be under a duty to be open and to hand over what is relevant.
- The second part is the everyday duty: candour built into complaints handling, safeguarding, and disciplinary processes, with clear consequences for defensiveness. As the Bill stands, universities are not covered by this part. They might be brought in later, either by an amendment in the Lords or by the Secretary of State through regulations. Regulators may also arrive at a similar position by another route; for example, the Office for Students through its governance principles or the OIA through its Good Practice Framework.
The everyday duty is not law for the sector today but it can be adopted voluntarily; being compelled by law to adopt should not be the reason to do so.
What candour would ask of an investigation
The duty would require adherence to principles that those who do investigations well will likely already recognise:
- Being transparent about process and reasoning. The parties understand what is being decided, on what basis, and what happens next; findings are explained rather than simply announced.
- Correcting mistakes as they are identified. When something has gone wrong in a process it is put right and acknowledged rather than left unaddressed.
- Not shaping a process around the institution’s own interests. The investigation follows the evidence and its handling is not influenced by how the outcome might reflect on the university.
This is not new to practice that is already trauma-informed and evidence-led. For many of us, a statutory duty of candour would reflect a standard we already hold ourselves to. However, codifying this duty is still important; it makes candour a shared commitment a process can be held to rather than a matter of individual good intentions.
The pressures that work against candour
Investigations and disciplinary processes are close to reputational and legal risk. This can show in small ways: reluctance to disclose the reasoning behind a decision, hesitation to admit a procedural error, communication with the parties that is guarded rather than open, or an outcome framed with attention to how it might be challenged. This may well be more caution than deliberate concealment.
A duty of candour treats such caution as something to be accountable for. A useful question whether the duty applies or not is whether protecting the institution’s position influences the work we do. An open commitment to candour is one way to guard against that, and a reason to adopt it now rather than waiting to be required to.
Candour is not the same as telling everyone everything
Casework involves sensitive information about identifiable people. A responding party has rights, a reporting party has an expectation of care, and both sit alongside our duties under data protection and confidentiality. Candour must operate within these limits and not against them. Being open about process, reasoning, and error is a different thing from being open about every detail held on file. If the duty is extended to the sector some of the work will be in defining what candour means where fairness to more than one person is always and necessarily involved. This fairness matters as much for the person facing an allegation as for the person who made it.
What to do now and what to watch
The everyday duty does not yet apply, so nothing is imposed on the sector today. However, in our most serious casework, there’s no reason not to adopt candour now: to be open about process and reasoning, to correct errors as they emerge, and to keep the institution’s own position from influencing the work we do. In the meantime, we can watch for:
- Any amendment in the Lords that names higher education providers, which would bring the everyday duty in directly.
- Signals from the Secretary of State about using regulations to do the same, which could come even after the Bill becomes law.
- Moves by the OfS or the OIA to build candour into their own frameworks, which is the route most likely to affect our casework in practice. (The OIA already operates transparent processes per its own principles.)
- The inquest duty, which may already apply where a student has died, and which is worth understanding now for the most serious cases.
Whatever the Lords or the Secretary of State decide the underlying idea is not difficult to support. Open, honest, and willing to correct the record is likely what most of us would want or expect from a serious process we were part of, on either side. For investigation and disciplinary work, a duty of candour would describe what doing the job well already involves rather than adding a new requirement. For that reason, it is worth committing to now in our most serious processes rather than waiting to be told.