Last month, ITV broadcasted the drama ‘Anne’. It told the powerful story of the indefatigable Anne Williams and her fight for justice for her son Kevin, and the other victims and survivors of the Hillsborough disaster. The programme made clear to viewers across the country the ordeal that the families of the disaster had to endure and the decades-long smear campaign that was conducted by those primarily responsible at South Yorkshire police.
It has taken nearly three decades for the families of those who died and the survivors to have the truth acknowledged and to get correct inquest verdicts. Yet even now, no one has been held to account through our criminal justice system for those unlawful killings. That is wrong and that is why since I was first elected in 1997, I’ve been campaigning on behalf of the Hillsborough families and survivors to secure real justice and ensure that what happened to the families in the Hillsborough disaster, doesn’t happen to any other family in any future disaster.
Families of public disasters usually want two simple things: they want to know what happened to their loved ones, and why; and they want to stop it ever happening again to any other family. This does not seem like much to ask, yet it is striking how frequently bereaved families feel let down by the official processes and legal proceedings that follow disasters. Time and time again the justice system lets down the loved ones of victims of disasters. Whilst we cannot prevent all disasters from happening, we can prevent things going wrong for those caught up in future disasters if the correct lessons are learned.
On the day of the 20th anniversary, Andy Burnham and I launched a joint call for all documentation relating to Hillsborough to be published to facilitate transparency. This later resulted in the establishment of the Hillsborough Independent Panel. It was only because of the formation of the panel, and it was only because they had access to all documentation, that the truth about what happened on that terrible day was finally accepted by the establishment 23 years after the disaster.
For a number of years, Lord Michael Wills and I have been introducing legislation that would stop legal proceedings arising out of disasters from lasting for decades and from going so wrong, into the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Public Advocate bill seeks to put bereaved families collectively at the heart of the response to disasters through the establishment of an independent public advocate, who if the bereaved families wish it, will act as a representative of their interests, an adviser and a guide. The advocate, as a data controller, would be able to establish a panel, like the Hillsborough Independent Panel, to facilitate transparency about what has happened at an early stage. Crucially, this would give the families the capacity to decide collectively on an initiative that would put them at the heart of events, instead of feeling, as bereaved families often do, that they are a mere adjunct to proceedings. This enforced transparency, shining a light into the darkest recesses of the reaction of public authorities caught up in disasters, would torpedo attempted cover ups and do so at an early stage.
Following the conclusion of ‘Anne’, Margaret Aspinall, Jenni Hicks, Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram, Theresa May, Gordon Brown and I, alongside many others joined together to renew calls for the passage of the ‘Hillsborough Law’ – a combination of the Public Advocate bill and the Public Authority (Accountability) bill. This would see the introduction of a charter for families bereaved through public tragedy, a statutory duty of candour on public servants during all forms of public inquiry and criminal investigation, proper participation of bereaved families at inquests through publicly funded legal representation, equality of arms for families in such proceedings and the introduction of a Public Advocate to act for families of the deceased after major incidents. There is a growing consensus that the ‘Hillsborough Law’ is vital to ensuring that families in future disasters get truth and justice without having to campaign for three decades.
We must give the collective voice of the bereaved families agency in the proceedings that inevitably follow a disaster. We must search for the truth using transparency as a key tool and not allow the legal forums to become a way for moneyed vested interests to set about evading their responsibility for the disasters they have caused. Now is the time to move forward and change the law to prevent what went so wrong in the aftermath of Hillsborough from ever happening to any other families again. That is why we must have the Hillsborough Law now.
