Private Prosecutor: Ball v Johnson (2019). Producer: Lying in Politics Documentary. Amendments: Misleading the Public, Public Office (Accountability) Bill.
London, England
Joined November 2014
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1/3 Lying to the public is about to become a crime in the UK.
Ministers, civil servants, police, the military: all covered by the new Hillsborough Law.
Guess who isn't? The people writing it.
2/3 Backbench MPs, shadow ministers and peers are writing themselves out of the offence, which carries up to two years in prison.
Our amendment covers every legislator across the UK, for what they say outside Parliament. Peers vote on it later this year.
3/3 A law against deceiving the public cannot exempt the people who make the laws.
Please share this. Back the campaign: execprosec.org
It's happening again: the Conservative front bench want to delay the Hillsborough Law's Misleading the Public offence until the government finishes a review. No deadline.
It's only a probing amendment for now. If it came back for a vote at Report stage, that would be bad.
1/3 Last night two peers tried to delete the heart of the Hillsborough Law: the offence that makes it a crime for public officials to deliberately mislead the public. They gave no statement saying it was just a probing amendment.
It failed. The offence stays in the Bill.
2/3 Lord Alton said removing it would "lobotomise this bill", warning of "bewilderment, perhaps even betrayal" among the Hillsborough families. The Government said it must stay.
No vote was forced. Thank you to the peers who stood up for the families.
The government says including MPs and peers in the Misleading the Public offence would interfere with parliamentary privilege.
Totally irrelevant. Our amendment only applies outside Parliament. It says so at the top. And the vote on it is separate from the Bill.
A message to every member of the House of Lords.
You asked me not to go to the press. I'm doing it anyway, because I'm trying to help you.
If you criminalise lying to the public for everyone apart from yourselves, public trust in Parliament will be decimated.
Marcus J Ball (Private Prosecutor and Producer) retweeted
1/4 Two members of the House of Lords are attacking the Hillsborough Law.
Tomorrow they will try to delete its entire Misleading the Public offence: the part that would make it a crime for public officials to deliberately mislead the public.
Here is the story.
1/4 Two members of the House of Lords are attacking the Hillsborough Law.
Tomorrow they will try to delete its entire Misleading the Public offence: the part that would make it a crime for public officials to deliberately mislead the public.
Here is the story.
3/4 They tabled it three days after we proposed that members of the House of Lords should be covered by the offence too.
I can't prove why. But it looks like retaliation: peers who would rather wreck 37 years of the Hillsborough families' fight than face the law themselves.
1/5 This weekend's Sunday Telegraph: “Peers accuse Burnham of hypocrisy over Hillsborough Law”.
The Bill will make it a crime for public officials to deliberately mislead the public. But MPs and peers are writing themselves out of it. Here's why that's insane:
4/5 The government says including legislators would interfere with parliamentary privilege. Our amendment only applies outside Parliament. It says so at the top.
5/5 Peers will vote on our amendment separately from the Bill, so the Hillsborough Law itself is not at risk.
Send this to your MP. Send it to a peer.
The Telegraph: telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
