Hillsborough Law Bill: six key takeaways for higher education institutions following the introduction of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill

A quick update to share on the Public Office (Accountability) Bill - also referred to as the Hillsborough Law Bill - which has just been introduced to Parliament. The Bill is likely to have significant implications for how universities and HEIs engage with coroner's inquests in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and fatal accident inquiries in Scotland.

Here are six important takeaways for the higher education sector from our reading of the Bill, as it was introduced at Westminster (September 2025):

📃  1. The Bill will place on public bodies, including universities and HEIs, a new duty of candour and assistance at inquiries, inquests and other external investigations. In essence, this means that universities/HEIs will be under a new statutory duty to provide information and evidence openly and proactively in contexts such as coroner's inquests (England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) and fatal accident inquiries (Scotland).

📃  2. Coroners (England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) and Sheriffs (Scotland) will have strengthened powers to compel evidence from universities/HEIs or other bodies during an inquest/inquiry.

📃  3. There will be a meaningful shift in the level of proactivity expected from universities/HEIs when it comes to sharing information with families and with inquests or inquiries following a student death. Imagine, for example, that a university is aware that a student who took their own life had relevant disability support requirements that were not properly implemented, or had requested mental health support from university staff with no meaningful follow-up. In such circumstances, the new duty is likely to mean that the university must notify the coroner/sheriff of this information proactively, rather than waiting for the inquest/inquiry or the family to request this information.

📃  4. The Bill extends legal aid so that families will have access to legal representation in any inquest where a public authority is an interested person. Often, in the case of a student death, one or more public authorities – for example, universities, NHS trusts, etc. – are designated as interested persons (for example, in a coroner’s inquest). This Bill will mean that, in such situations, families will not need to self-fund, or crowdfund to pay for, their legal representation, but will have instead have access to non-means tested legal help and advocacy.

📃  5. There will be an expectation that universities model principles of candour in their internal policies and processes too. The Bill may, for example, require universities to devise new codes of ethics for staff, clearer disciplinary sanctions for non-compliance with professional duties of candour, and tighter internal protections for whistleblowers.

📃  6. The Bill will abolish the current common law offence of misconduct in public office and replace it with two new statutory offences of “wilful misconduct” and “seriously improper acts”. While the scope of these new offences is similar to that of the current common law “misconduct in public office” offence, the clearer statutory definition and stronger enforcement process and the more serious consequences (they are likely to carry penalties of up to 10- and 14- years imprisonment) are designed to strengthen accountability.

If you have any specific questions about the Bill and its implications for higher education that you would like us to explore in a future email, contact us to let us know.

The Public Office (Accountability) Bill places additional pressure on universities/HEIs, and on their management of support and family liaison following a student death.

In all of our training on different aspects of student death management, we explore practical ways to demonstrate openness and candour by default, which will be increasingly important if/when this new Bill is passed.

We deliver our student death-related training course Coordinating actions and providing support following a student death as an online training event open-to-the-sector (see our Upcoming online training events page for all our upcoming events), or as a ready-to-run training session which can be easily scheduled online and delivered at a time that works best for your cohort. We also run a specific training course on Liaising with a family following a student death, for those colleagues who may be asked to be your institution's lead point of contact for a family in these cases. We can run this course online for a small group of your colleagues for a fixed price of £995 + VAT.