Government likely to exempt spies from new cover-up law

A new bill to hold authorities to account for cover-ups has stalled in parliament. And the government looks like its going to protect its own from scrutiny once again. The proposed Hillsborough law would see spy agencies and other state officials finally held accountable if they lie.

Families of the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster victims and those whose loved ones were killed and wounded in the 2017 Manchester Arena Bombing have been angered by the delay. In both cases the authorities lied and covered up the truth.

The BBC reported on 13 January:

The prime minister will meet the families of victims of the Manchester Arena attack and Hillsborough disaster on Wednesday to discuss ongoing amendments to the so-called Hillsborough Law.

A week earlier the Manchester families had demanded that MI5 be included in the law. The internal security service was found to have lied at the inquiry into the bombing. The head of the agency was later forced to apologise. It turned out that MI5 had intelligence on the bomber, Salman Abedi, months before the attack.

There’s a great breakdown of what is at stake in the new bill here:

Balance of power?

UK PM Keir Starmer previously promised that the new law would restore a “balance of power in Britain”. Yet on 15 January it was being reported o the BBC that the UK spy agencies MI6, MI5, and GCHQ, could be exempt from the law:

The govt is planning to exempt MI5 and MI6 from the Hillsborough Law, so they can withhold information & lie.

A reminder that the inquiry into the Manchester arena bombing found MI5 did not present an accurate picture of events & provided a false narrative about what they knew pic.twitter.com/w4nGFjTCFf

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) January 15, 2026

Manchester major Andy Burnham said that the idea the heads of MI5 or MI6 would be the ones to decided if their spies gave evidence:

isn’t acceptable to the families. And I support them. I support them in this. We’ve always said it should be the full Hillsborough law.

The govt is planning to water down the Hillsborough Law by exempting MI5 and MI6 from its duty of candour@AndyBurnhamGM speaks out against this proposal: "We've always said it should be the full Hillsborough Law" pic.twitter.com/tXQ0dB1q2V

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) January 15, 2026

Lawyer Peter Weatherby worked with both groups in their campaigns. On 5 January he warned:

The problem was that MI5 decided to protect themselves after the fact, and advance the false narrative.

And that just means that those failures will repeat in the future, and nobody will have confidence in MI5.

Adding:

If this law is passed and they’re required to tell the truth even when things go wrong, then failures can be rectified and people can be safer in the future.

The British state seems determined that it remain virtually immune from scrutiny. Keir Starmer made his name as a human rights lawyer in cases just like these. But whatever moral impulses he once had as a barrister, he seems to have sided with power as politician.

Featured image via the Canary