Victims and Prisoners Bill (Fourth sitting)

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

We cannot have a dialogue here.

[The Chair]

We are very grateful to you—this is a very moving testimony and you have had the most appalling experience—but we cannot have a general conversation; we have to have set questions. Can I now ask Maria Miller to ask her questions?

Jenni Hicks: Yes, sorry about that.

[The Chair]

Sorry—Maria Eagle. I do not know why; I was thinking of someone else.

[Maria Eagle]

It is fine. I have been called some names in my time—usually Angela.

[The Chair]

It is quite a moving afternoon, so it is difficult to concentrate.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Absolutely. May I begin by thanking Jenni Hicks for coming today? I will just say to the Committee that she is my constituent. She was one of the first people who came to see me when I was elected in 1997, and here we still are, trying to sort things out.

Jenni Hicks: That is why I automatically asked Maria. I do apologise.

[Maria Eagle]

I am just making it clear that I do know the witness.

Jenni Hicks: Maria is the only person that I know here.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Jenni, you have set out your appalling experience, and I know that you could say a lot more about what has happened over the years. If an independent public advocate had been in place at the time of Hillsborough, what difference might that have made to your experience as a family?

Jenni Hicks: I am hoping that an independent public advocate and their team would be able to have sight of the documentation that is needed to get to the truth. There has got to be transparency. We did not have that transparency until 2012—it took 23 years for us to have transparency about how our loved ones died. That is the difference that I am hoping it would make. That is such an important part.

Obviously, the independent public advocate would be able to guide people towards help in other ways, but for a major public disaster like the Hillsborough disaster, which was surrounded by a lot of lies and corruption, just to have transparency about the truth of what really happened was vital. We would never have known the truth without that. That is what was so good about the Hillsborough Independent Panel: it operated through transparency and sight of the documentation that it needed to come to its conclusions.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Am I right in thinking that, from an early stage with Hillsborough, the legal proceedings became very adversarial and the public authorities started trying to blame anybody else but themselves, which in this instance was your relatives and the survivors of the disaster?

Jenni Hicks: Yes.

[Maria Eagle]

Q What impact did that have on you as a bereaved family member? What impact did that have on the other families?

Jenni Hicks: It was horrendous. It was cruel. We were put through such an inhumane process. Not only had we lost our loved ones—in my case, my two daughters—but we did not have the truth about how they died. It was surrounded by lies.

I was there on the day. We were there as a family, and my ex-husband was there on the pitch with the girls, so we knew that the propaganda was lies. We were up against organisations like the police and the Government—like I said in my statement, those were huge, huge obstacles at the time—but we still carried on fighting, because we knew in our hearts what the truth was. Finally, 23 years later, we did have that truth, but it was a long, hard and gruelling process. It is not something that I would want anybody else ever, ever to have to go through.

It is bad enough to find yourself as part of a disaster and to be bereaved by a disaster. Then, when you cannot even get to the truth about what happened—or you know the truth and you know that lies are being put out there—it is not good. Nobody should ever, ever have to be put through that process again. I would like it to be a legacy for the 97 people who died that nobody else has to suffer like the Hillsborough families did.

[Maria Eagle]

Q You fought over so many years against almost impossible odds and you have made progress. However, with the public authorities over the years and the court cases that have happened, have you ever felt supported as family members? One of the things about a public advocate is that they can provide some support to families. Was that anything that you got in your early experience following the disaster?

Jenni Hicks: No.

[Maria Eagle]

Q So you felt on your own.

Jenni Hicks: Yes. We felt on our own with this huge fight to find out what had really happened, or in our case—because we were at the match and knew what had happened—it was to find the evidence of the truth. We basically knew the truth but we could not get hold of the evidence; nobody could. It was not until the Hillsborough Independent Panel that we had that evidence, finally, and we finally—as I say, four years after HIP—had the correct inquest verdicts. The first inquest put a 3.15 cut-off in, so a lot of the vital evidence after 3.15 pm could not be heard. There was absolutely nothing we could do about it. It is very, very frustrating.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Finally from me, Jenni, because I am sure colleagues will want to ask questions, do you think it is important that families caught up in this way in future disasters have some kind of capacity to have an impact and have agency, and can get an independent public advocate involved—if one is there, if the statute passes—and get somebody involved who is seen as on their side and can help them?

Jenni Hicks: Yes, that is vitally important. That is why I am supporting it. That is why I am here today speaking about it—because I think it is vitally important that we have this facility, but that we have it correctly and they do keep their independence. When you are caught up in disasters, particularly if there is propaganda surrounding it, you need to be able to trust—you would need trust in a public advocate in a team. By having to report to a Minister, you are thinking, “Well, who is in charge of this? Is it the public advocate or is it the Minister?” I do not think that would go down very well.

[Maria Eagle]

Thank you.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Q Thank you for coming today and sharing your experiences. I know how painful that will have been. I was at the University of Sheffield at the time of the Hillsborough disaster and one of my friends also died in that tragedy. I recognise very much from what you are saying the experience that other friends and families had at that time. I pay huge tribute to you for the massive amount of work that you have done to try to make sure there is justice for the families and friends of those who were bereaved. Thank you for everything you have done.

Jenni Hicks: Thank you, but it was not just me. It was me and the rest of the families, and the whole city of Liverpool, which suffered a huge injustice that day.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear from Kimia Zabihyan of Grenfell Next of Kin. I think we are having some technical problems with Dr Stuart Murray, so we have just one witness for this quarter of an hour session.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Thank you for coming along. I realise that there are lots of other places you could be, so we are very grateful that you have come along to give us your evidence. Could you tell us a little about your story and how you have been affected by what happened at Grenfell?

Kimia Zabihyan: Actually, I started off on the ground as a volunteer. There were many, many people who came to the area affected by the tower. I have my roots in that borough and I grew up there, so it touched me very deeply, but the thing that struck me the most was seeing pictures of the missing people. Many of them looked like people who were familiar to me, because they looked like my family members. It really felt very personal, because 85% of the people who died in the tragedy were black and brown people. I felt that it was really important to make sure that there was advocacy for that, particularly given that most of the people who died were recent migrants.

It is very different from the Hillsborough experience and many other experiences—the Marchioness, for instance. This was the first national tragedy that predominantly affected black and brown people, and it became very obvious that the system responding to the moment was entirely white. That created dissonance, and it felt as though there was room to advocate for those people, because the majority of them did not have roots in this country; they were recent migrants.

Immediately, we were told, “Don’t talk about race. Let’s just deny that whole part of it, because it will turn off public sympathy.” These were the things that I was experiencing and seeing as someone from that background and that heritage who is very blessed with the advantage and privilege of a good education, life experience and work experience. It felt really important to play a role, so that was really what brought me there and kept me there. I am still there after six years.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Over that period of time, you will have engaged with many, if not all, of the bereaved families, I imagine. Could you explain to the Committee your sense of what the first few years in this process have been like for those families? What would the value of an independent public advocate have been, if one had been in place at the time this happened? What would have been the value of having that role available to the families in the immediate aftermath of the disaster?

Kimia Zabihyan: That is a really big question. Actually, it is not just those few years; we are still in exactly the same place. We are still stuck in the same place because we do not have an independent public advocate and there is no recognised role for it, really, even though I am called an advocate by all the systems and I engage with all the systems. Ultimately, it has been one of choice, and in a way you are trapped by it, because you know that if you step away, there is nothing in its place. There is nothing to take that place.

With those families who have lost immediate family members, several things happen. In the first instance, it will be a disaster by its very nature, because it is not expected. There is chaos—absolute chaos. The people who know pretty quickly that their family—their child, mother, father, husband or wife—is missing are in shock. What happens is that immediately there is a separation; they become invisible, because they are sort of protected by the police—quite rightly—and the victim support units etcetera, so they are literally invisible on the scene.

We had survivors on the scene and we had systems engaging with survivors, but we did not have anything in place for the actual bereaved—nothing. None of the policies addressed their needs and their specific characteristics, which in this case were essentially rooted in their otherness, if you like. Their otherness became even more othered, and they became even more marginalised. The system responded with policies for the tragedy, but it was very much through one particular prism, which was through only the survivor prism. To this day, we still do not have any policies that actually address the specifics of the next of kin of the deceased, because there was never that public advocacy role.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Do you think it is important that if there is a public advocate—if this legislation goes through, suitably amended until everybody thinks it is perfect and what is needed—the families affected have some agency and the public advocate can create transparency, or do you think it is more important to signpost to other services at an early stage?

Kimia Zabihyan: No, not at all. I am passionate about the fact that there needs to be a public advocacy role, to the point where I have basically been doing it pro bono for six years, because I cannot believe that we do not have such a thing in place. Coming back to some of the questions you were asking Jenni Hicks earlier, it is really important to have that whole system set up, because disasters do not make appointments—they happen. You need to have a system and structure in place that can just be instigated as part of a resilience plan or disaster response. It needs to be extremely diverse, and it needs to have people who are awkward and definitely on the side of the victims.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Do you think that the current proposal sets out a public advocate who is independent enough, or would you like to see it more independent of the Minister than in the current draft? At the moment, the Minister can appoint, set terms of reference, arrange remuneration and dismiss.

Kimia Zabihyan: It is very difficult, because what does independence really mean? You can call a person independent, but actually they are really not that independent. The pool of people you need to be looking at are people who have a huge amount of integrity and a footprint in speaking truth to power. If a person has that sort of credibility, it does not matter who they are reporting to.

The disadvantage of their being completely separate from our democratic system is that essentially they are toothless, so this independent person just becomes another report that is given to the Minister. It does not have any weight; it does not have any power. It needs to be someone who has the power to make policy interventions and decisions, at ministerial level—appointed by the PM even, not Ministers.

With Grenfell, we had a conveyor belt of Ministers. We had three name changes and six Ministers. The Department started off as the Department for Communities and Local Government, then it became the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and then the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and Ministers do not really mean anything, because they come and go. It has to be at Prime Minister level.

More importantly, “independent” can mean different things to different people. It was interesting watching the covid inquiry the other day, when Sir Oliver Letwin talked a little about that. It is about having people in the room who ask the awkward questions and are able to make a difference. We do not want someone else who just writes another report that goes nowhere. That is why it can take 30-something years.

We need to do that for our democracy and for our efficiency. You would be amazed at how much money has been wasted in the Grenfell response and recovery—ridiculous amounts of money—because the whole system is so inefficient.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Finally from me, what powers do you think the independent public advocate, as you envisage it, should have to be able effectively to do the job that you see it doing?

Kimia Zabihyan: To give you an example, very early on, when it became apparent that the majority of the people who had died were ethnic minorities in this country, because this is London and it happened in London—Grenfell will not be the last time this happens—the system did not know how to respond to that. The next of kin tended to live abroad, so we had to locate them and arrange for visas and what have you to bring them to the UK for the processes of identification, DNA tests and that sort of thing.

At the time, we were very lucky, because Amber Rudd came down and got it very quickly. She absolutely got it very quickly. The one thing that happened really promptly was that she allowed for that; she made sure that we had processes to identify the next of kin, get them on a plane and make sure they had visas—or even, sometimes, just to get them on a plane and issue the visa as soon as they arrived at the airport. People were coming from conflict zones, places where there might not be an embassy or places where they would not even be allowed past the first security gate. We had people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and all sorts of places that were quite awkward.

The assumption that the system makes is a sort of myopic, white middle-class assumption about who victims are and therefore what the responses should be. The IPA or the panel has to be really quite progressive, sophisticated and understanding, and it has to have the experience that the world does not really function like that any more.

That was an example of something that worked—just doing something very practical—but only Amber Rudd had the power to do that, because she was the Home Secretary. We are now at a stage where we are trying to execute things that respond to the need of the next of kin, but time passes and the system moves at a different pace—it is on a different timeline. Six years for those in the system is, “Oh, we’ve sorted everything; we’re at the six-year mark,” whereas for the people who are affected, the six-year mark does not mean anything, because they are still at ground zero trying to get policies or attention for issues that speak to their particular characteristic.

If we have a panel or an independent advocate who can speak to Ministers and make policies that address the specificity of the victims, that will serve not only the victims, but our democracy. It will also save a ton of money.

[Maria Eagle]

Thank you.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Q What are your thoughts on the definitions in the Bill for victims, major incidents, harm and serious harm? I do not know if you have read the Bill.

Kimia Zabihyan: I have, but I can only speak of my own experiences. The majority of my experience has been with the immediate family members, and they were the ones who defined what is a disaster, or a national disaster. It is the sort of tombstone imperative: once you get a certain number of fatalities, it is a thing. That was made very clear to me by someone very senior in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, who said, “You do realise that if less than 10 people had died in the tower, we wouldn’t even be obliged to rehouse everybody.” They would have just gone on the housing list. They might have got lots of points, but they would have had to wait on the housing list for appropriate accommodation. It is because of the number of fatalities that the thing becomes a thing, yet they are denied that power, or respect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rob Butler]

Q Are you not arguing, essentially, that there does need to be a panel of people with a range of skills? To come back a little bit on your criticism—if I can put it that way—of the possibility of delay, is it not the case that each individual situation will need specific qualities and the specific skills of individual people? It is inevitable that it will need a little bit of time to find the right people to deal with the right incident. None the less, if we know of a pool of suitably qualified and experienced people who are ready to serve, that would be ideal.

Sophie Cartwright: Part of the function of the IPA is said to be a signposting role, but if it is not in place in the immediate aftermath and then there is this delay in putting it in place, I cannot quite see what the function is, if it is not to replace the role of legal representation, which it is not intended to do.

If it is not in place to deal with the immediate aftermath, for support and signposting, I do not see what its functions really are in terms of challenging public authorities, unless it is going to be a role that is linked to the changes on the duty of candour, which is being massively championed on the back of the work of Bishop James Jones, and that sort of role for challenging public authorities.

It is about clarity on what the function of the IPA is intended to be. At the moment, I do not see, practically, as the role is envisaged through the Bill, that it is going to be meaningful or what the IPA is intended to achieve by way of support and signposting for victims of major incidents, if it is not in place and ready to go. That is the concern, particularly when under clause 25 there have to be terms of appointments and then agreement, which is inevitably going to have delays. To what extent, then, is it really discharging what was intended to be its signposting and supportive role, if it is not there at the get-go of a major incident?

[Maria Eagle]

Q I do not know whether you managed to hear Lord Michael Wills’s evidence from earlier today. He had a private Member’s Bill in the House of Lords in 2014 to introduce an IPA. He envisaged it, in part, as something that the families could call upon so that they felt that they had agency and there was something they could do at the early stages that would stop them just feeling like everything was being done to them and they had no role. But he also envisaged a role of ensuring transparency. For example, he envisaged his version being able to establish a Hillsborough Independent Panel-like arrangement, to gather in documents and give an account of the truth of what happened. Do you see that that might be a function that the independent public advocate could usefully pursue, if the Bill were amended to enable it?

Sophie Cartwright: Yes, that certainly seems to me to be a measurable and proportionate role for an IPA. It should be something that exists so that, when incidents happen, families know that the body exists and know where to go, rather than thinking, “Who is the IPA? Who has been appointed, and who will it be?” and the experience being dependent on who that IPA is.

If it is a body that exists, where families know that they can go as part of that search for the truth or to seek advice, I absolutely see that as more what was intended when the IPA was initially proposed. Certainly, the genesis of the IPA was very much the experience of Hillsborough. There has been a lot of discussion around it having a role holding core public authorities to account. I do not necessarily know how practically that would work when there is an inquest and a coroner is discharging their investigatory duty or—if there were to be an inquiry—how a chairman would discharge their role as the chairman. There has to be some thought around that to ensure that it does not trespass within the investigatory roles and the statutory functions of other investigators post major incidents.

The original concern was that public authorities had not shown candour in their approach to investigations, so that may be a function of the IPA. Certainly, when the IPA role was first announced in March by Mr Raab, a lot of the support seemed to be around saying, “This should be a role for the IPA around Hillsborough’s duty of candour.” I really cannot comment more broadly on that, but that was what was intended originally when the IPA was first proposed, which would fit with the evidence that you heard this morning. I apologise that I have not had access to that evidence in advance of speaking to you today.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Drawing on your own experience in relation to the Manchester Arena bombing, I am sure you will have had discussions with affected family members. Do you see anything in the Bill in respect of the independent public advocate as envisaged that would have assisted those people you have subsequently came across when dealing with the Manchester Arena bombing? Do you think that there is something in the Bill that would have made things easier for them to deal with the aftermath of that terrible experience?

Sophie Cartwright: If the IPA had existed then as a place where the families could go for help, then certainly. The IPA could have a function to assist with that immediate intrusion that can occur to families. A lot of the families and witnesses that gave evidence to the inquiry talked about the massive intrusion on them by the press after the major incidents. If the IPA had a role to hear families’ concerns around press intrusion, and it liaised with editors and the like to stop that form of intrusion before lawyers were in place, I can definitely see that being an avenue to go down.

There was also a lot of concern from a number of family members about the blue light-type agencies, which immediately afterwards were putting out their own media and documentaries about events. I know that for a lot of the families the content of that material caused real concern. Again, the IPA could be somewhere they could go to speak about that and raise concerns, and the IPA could then be enabled to speak to the relevant representatives of those public authorities to ventilate the families’ concerns about that material, as well as to help explain the process to them.

After the Manchester Arena bombing, a lot of good work was done by the coroners and family liaison officers involved. I think having another place where victims could go to seek support in the immediate aftermath would be good. Anything that allows victims an avenue to try and understand what is happening is definitely for the good.

[Janet Daby]

Q You have mentioned that there needs to be more clarity and purpose around the IPA. With that in mind, how long do you think an IPA should be involved following a major incident?

Sophie Cartwright: If it remains as intended at the moment, that is not really clear, because obviously the terms of appointment will depend on the agreement with the Secretary of State. If there is to be a report-writing function that captures the victim’s views, it is going to be a longer-term thing. It certainly seems to be a role that is envisaged as running alongside an inquest and inquiry process, which is why it is quite difficult if it is a number of appointments of different IPAs rather than a full-time position of the office of the independent public advocate, with a head IPA that can appoint individuals as and when necessary.

Again, if it is envisaged as a role in the immediate aftermath for signposting and support until victims have their own lawyers, who then can very much discharge the roles and functions of an IPA, it might just be a shorter-term thing. But if it is intended to also capture the victim experience and have a report-writing role, that is a much longer-term thing. We need to consider the functions of the IPA and whether it is intended to be a full-time appointment. As it is currently drafted, it is intended to be multiple IPAs that apply for the role of the IPA and are then appointed with terms of reference. That is a very different thing, and it potentially has a longer shelf life.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Maria Eagle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Lady does an important public service in raising that point and I thank her for doing so. Let the message go out from this Chamber: “Do not be put off coming forward, giving your evidence and reporting allegations of serious sexual harm because of concerns about therapy notes. Get the therapy support that you need.” I want that message to go out loud and clear.

We are going to change the law to make it crystal clear that there will be no routine access to therapy notes; there will be access only when it is absolutely necessary and proportionate, and not by the defence, but principally in the very rare circumstances where a prosecutor needs to look at it. The message goes out that victims should come forward and co-operate with the criminal justice system, if they can.

Part 2 of the Bill provides better support for victims and the bereaved after major disasters such as terror attacks. The House will recall the awful events at Hillsborough and the most recent fire at Grenfell Tower, as well as the Manchester Arena bombing. The impact of those terrible tragedies is still felt to this day, especially by the families and friends of the victims. I know there is consensus on both sides of the House that survivors and families of victims caught up in such disasters must be given every support. No one should be left to feel their way in the dark as they grieve.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), the noble Lord Wills and many others for their tireless campaigning on the issue. Indeed, one of the most moving debates that I have ever had the privilege of listening to was one to which the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood contributed on this topic.

The Bill will introduce the UK’s first ever independent public advocate—an advocate to give a voice to those who have too often felt voiceless. The IPA will be a strong advocate for victims, the bereaved and whole communities affected. It will allow us to hear everyone, including those who, in the darkest moments of their grief, may understandably find it impossible to speak up for themselves and their legitimate concerns.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Alex Chalk]

I will just develop the point and then of course I will let the right hon. Lady come in.

From the earliest days after a disaster, the IPA will work on behalf of victims. It will be a crucial conduit between them and key public authorities, and it will focus resolutely on what survivors and the bereaved actually need, not just what others in authority might assume they need. The IPA will also help victims and the bereaved to navigate complex processes that most people would find deeply stressful and upsetting, such as investigations, inquests and public inquiries. On a practical level, it will give victims, the bereaved and the affected community a robust way of engaging the public authorities and Government—for example, by asking the coroner or the police for more information about inquests and investigations, or by pressing local government and central Government on their policies for victims.

[Maria Eagle]

I welcome the right hon. and learned Gentleman to his new role. I wonder whether he will be open to the idea—from those of us who have been working on this for some time—of strengthening the provisions in the Bill to improve them?

[Alex Chalk]

In preparation for today’s debate, I read the right hon. Lady’s Bill and have considered it with care. Of course, I am open to further discussions with her; she has lived and breathed this issue for a long time, and it is absolutely right that I consider those points. I think that there are—well, let us leave it at that and discuss those matters in due course.

[Maria Eagle]

Yes, fine.

[Alex Chalk]

Thank you.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee, on which I also sit. I agreed with much of what he said, particularly in respect of part 3 and some of the weaknesses in part 1, but I will begin with part 2. I suppose people would expect me to do that, given that it is about the independent public advocate, which I have been campaigning on and have had views about in this House for many years.

I welcome, again, the new Secretary of State to his place, despite the fact that having a whirlwind of appointments and eight Justice Secretaries in eight years does sometimes leave certain potential issues with continuity and ensuring that things happen in a sensible way, apart from the differences in approach and personality that one might come across. I know he cares about this particular issue. He responded to the Backbench Business debate—he made reference to it in his remarks—that I managed to secure following the final collapse of the Hillsborough criminal trials. That is some time ago now. There has been no reason since then—apart from perhaps turbulence in the Government, I say gently—for not dealing with this. The final collapse of the criminal trials was the last impediment to dealing with the recommendations in Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report, “The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power” in which he was asked to come up with—and did come up with—recommendations to learn the lessons of Hillsborough.

Bishop Jones was asked and commissioned to do that by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), whom I am pleased to commend for the work and effort she put in over the years when she had responsibility for dealing with the aftermath of Hillsborough. She developed a real understanding of some of these issues. The Secretary of State will be talking to various predecessors—people who have done his job and others who relate to it—and he could do a lot worse than sit down with the right hon. Lady. I am not trying to organise his diary—or hers, which would probably be more difficult—but she has a real insight from his side of the House into some of these issues. I recommend, if he gets the chance, that he sits down with her.

When the right hon. and learned Gentleman replied to the debate after the collapse of the last of the criminal trials arising out of the circumstances of Hillsborough, which is over 18 months ago now, he did promise, after being asked by me, to get out the response to Bishop James’s 2017 report by last Christmas; that was his hope. That has slipped for various reasons. The latest we have been told by Ministers on the Floor of the House is that it will be published in its full glory by this spring. I just say to him that we are nearly into summer and we still have not seen sight or sound of the response. I have read the Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report into coroners. We were told that many of its recommendations would be dealt with in the overarching response to Bishop James’s report into the lessons to be learnt from Hillsborough. There are some outstanding recommendations, on which the Select Committee had what I would call a straight bat response from the Government. Perhaps they too can be dealt with when that response is completed.

I welcome very much the Government’s intent to legislate and the fact that part 2 is in the Bill. I would have preferred a stand-alone Bill, but that is neither here nor there. The fact that there are clauses in the Bill that relate to establishing an independent public advocate is very welcome; better late than never. The whole purpose of the independent public advocate is not to just add a further hoop for families to jump through, or a further stage that families need to go through at the beginning of the process. It is to stop the aftermath of public disasters going so badly wrong, as the aftermath of Hillsborough did.

It is more than 34 years since that disaster happened. We all remember that it was televised—there are hours and hours of film of that disaster. It is not as if it happened in secret and that what had really gone on had to be winkled out; it was televised live at the time. It cannot be right that it should have taken such a long time for those families to have properly acknowledged what happened to their loved ones, and for the very many thousands of traumatised survivors who witnessed that horror—they were not just from Liverpool, because there were two teams playing in that semi-final—to have properly acknowledged what happened. For that to have gone on for so long, with any controversy at all about what happened, when Lord Justice Taylor, within three months of the original disaster, set out in his interim report substantially correctly, although not totally correctly, the full causes and reasons, shows how badly things can go wrong in public disasters when there are interested parties who try to deflect the blame, and when state organisations, whether it be the police or others, try to make sure that their reputation is not trashed by responsibility being pinned on them and are willing to do anything and use any amount of resource to blame somebody else. That is what happened. So it is no surprise that things can go badly awry.

One could just say that Hillsborough was a terrible example, and it was. The circumstances of every disaster are different, but there are common elements. One common element is that, where state-funded organisations —the arms of the state—are involved, they appear to think that their reputation matters more than the truth. They appear to think that any amount of budget that they have over the years can and ought to be used to defend that reputation, and they often appear to think that it is perfectly alright to blame the victims, to blame others—to blame anybody but themselves. That is what we have to stop.

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend has been an amazing campaigner on this, but does she agree that one of the commonalities between Hillsborough, Orgreave and child sexual exploitation in Rotherham was South Yorkshire police, so when these patterns are formed, the Government need to do something to step in?

[Maria Eagle]

My hon. Friend is correct. Where that does happen, if there is no accountability for what goes wrong, especially where there is venality—which there was at Orgreave and which was shown again at Hillsborough by South Yorkshire police— and if there is no reckoning, that kind of behaviour will not be corrected. One value of making sure that the aftermath of disasters does not go so terribly wrong is that one can keep organisations that may be tempted to behave in that way on the straight and narrow. I remember that, after the King’s Cross fire, the person responsible for London Regional Transport, who was found to be responsible for the cover-up that happened, was sacked. That then makes a big difference to the way in which the organisations involved deal with the aftermath of a disaster.

The whole purpose of having an independent public advocate is to try to ensure that, in the aftermath of such disasters, things do not go wrong. I am glad to see that the Secretary of State has re-read my Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill, because I know he will have read it before. I have been introducing the Bill in this House since 2016, and it has been introduced in the House of Lords by my friend the noble Lord Wills. My Bill proposes what finally worked for Hillsborough—the Hillsborough independent panel. It was a non-legal process, because almost all the legal processes and cases failed, but it was used to shine a light of transparency on what actually happened and to stop cover-ups. If the cover-up at Hillsborough could have been stopped from the beginning, we would not be 34 years down the line trying to untangle all of the intervening processes. The Hillsborough independent panel would not have had to look at millions of documents; it could have looked at far fewer if it had been doing its work within, say, two or three years.

In addition, any organisation seeking to use its powers and its people to organise cover-ups would know that the rock was going to be lifted up, that a torch was going to be shone upon what was under it and that it would not get away with the kind of cover-ups openly organised by South Yorkshire Police after Hillsborough to subvert the findings of the public inquiry, the Taylor Interim Report, which clearly blamed the police, made remarks about the way the police have behaved and said that they should not have behaved like that.

The police then set about simply using the inquests to change the impression of the interim report—and didn’t they succeed in that? From then on, no legal process worked until the Hillsborough independent panel, 23 years later, was able to get a full acceptance of the truth by close examination of documents. If we had the power to do that effectively at an early stage in the aftermath of disasters, it would save millions of pounds and prevent things from going wrong for years and budgets from being reduced and diverted into looking at legal proceedings.

We see some of the same things happening elsewhere. Grenfell has already been going on for too long without a proper understanding of precisely what happened, who was to blame and what went wrong. I have constituents who lost a child in the Manchester Arena bombing; even with the inquests and the inquiry put together to run concurrently, it has still been over five years since the bombing. These processes can extend for many years.

There will unfortunately be more disasters. Although we can try to minimise their occurrence, they are by their nature events that go wrong in combination, in a way that means terrible things happen. However, if we have a way to stop their aftermath going as wrong as those of some of the disasters over the years, we will not only be doing a real service to the victims and survivors of those disasters, who have got quite enough to be dealing with having lost their loved ones, but saving a lot of money in the end for the state.

The investigations into Hillsborough over the years have cost millions upon millions of pounds. The budget of any public advocate would be a lot lower than that and, if they were able to stop things going wrong, we would be doing ourselves a favour. I value very much the fact that provisions are now published and the Secretary of State is intent upon legislating, but there are two main reasons why the Government proposals will not work as my Bill intends.

The Government proposals deny agency to bereaved families in calling the advocate into action. One of the things anybody who is bereaved in a public disaster will say is that they stop being an ordinary person out of the public limelight and, at a time when they are having to cope with the grief of losing a loved one, suddenly the spotlight of the entire nation is upon them and their family as they try to grieve. Things are done to the family; things are set up outwith their capacity to arrange them, such as the inquest, to which they are often not party so they certainly do not get legal aid, and the inquiry, at which perhaps they might not necessarily get representation. All those things happen around them while they are in a fog of grief, wondering what is going on. They feel powerless; they feel “done-to”. They do not feel that they have any capacity to influence or be a part of what is happening, or to speak any kind of truth to any kind of power. They often feel like spare parts, third parties, not involved. Yet the families of a disaster are the most deeply involved, because they have lost the most, so it is tremendously important to give them collective agency to decide that the advocate should be involved, rather than saying, “Oh, and here is another thing we are going to do for you and give to you, whether you want it or not, and you will not have any part in deciding.” My Bill does that; the Secretary of State’s proposals do not.

There also has to be a power to be not just a sign-poster. I do not object to the provisions in the Bill enabling the advocate to help, signpost and do those kinds of things for bereaved families—that can be helpful—but it cannot be only that. I know that the Hillsborough families had people trying to signpost them to things, and that did not work with what was going on at that time in respect of that particular disaster. The point of the proposals in my Bill, which are not currently in the Government Bill, is to enable the advocate to establish a Hillsborough panel-type arrangement to guarantee transparency, ensuring that the advocate is therefore a data controller and has the documentation that they need. It should be an awful lot less than the Hillsborough independent panel had to collect, because not as much time will have passed and one would expect it to be done at an earlier stage in the aftermath of any disaster.

If amendments enabling the advocate to be a data controller and to establish an independent panel were accepted, giving the families agency to decide for themselves whether they want the involvement of the public advocate, that would enable the provision to do what I want it to do—prevent the aftermath of disasters from going so disastrously wrong for bereaved families. I have dealt with a number of these kinds of issues in my constituency over the 26 years that I have been a Member of this House—I feel old enough—and if we were able to do that, we could prevent things from going wrong and would not therefore have any instances whereby, 34 years later, we in this Chamber are still discussing what went on, as we do with what happened at Hillsborough in 1989. We should not have to do that. Those families should have peace, but they still do not have it.

I believe very strongly that, if we can prevent that kind of thing from happening to other families who are, through no fault of their own, caught up in disasters that they did not want to be caught up in, resulting in bereavement and pain, we would do the whole country a service. That would help a small number of people, it would not cost that much, and it would save a lot of public money over time, but the provisions, as currently drafted, will not be effective enough to do that.

I see the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) in his place. I also had meetings with him about these provisions, and he was very helpful. I hope that the Secretary of State will keep an open mind and will think that we are all on the same side. We want something effective to be done; we do not want to add some kind of process that will not make things better enough, thereby missing an opportunity to make things better than they are.

I do not care who legislates for that. If it is a Labour Government, I will nag them just as much as I have been discussing it with Conservative Ministers, of whom I have met an awful lot over the past few years—many of them are in the Chamber now, in fact. I hope that, between us all, we can take this forward, because it would be a cheap way of ensuring that we save a lot of public money over time, and would really help the families of those who are needlessly and through no fault of their own caught up in future public disasters—we hope that they will be few, but disasters happen. It would provide the Hillsborough families with the comfort of knowing that the horrendous experience they have gone through over 34-plus years will not be suffered by anyone else unlucky enough to be caught up in a public disaster.

Now is our chance to tackle this issue, so I ask the Secretary of State please not to defend every word of the current drafting and to have a more open mind about what we can achieve. There is a real opportunity for us, cross party, to make a big difference to the lives of a small number of people who will have enough to deal with when their family gets caught up in a disaster and they lose somebody. We can really make a difference, and I hope the Secretary of State will be open to doing so. I am perfectly happy to talk to him and to the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), about how best to do that. We need this legislation now. Let us make sure we are better prepared if another disaster happens.

Approved Premises (Substance Testing) Bill (Morning sitting)

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury for expertly guiding the Bill through Second Reading and into Committee. I know from recent experience that that can be a challenging task; I congratulate him on navigating the process to this stage.

Sadly, we know that psychoactive drugs are becoming more prevalent in approved premises across the United Kingdom and are undermining the important work there. I welcome clause 1, which, building on the recommendation of the prisons and probation ombudsman, would allow managers to authorise approved premises staff to ask for and require a urine sample, rather than an oral fluid test, from any resident. The sample could then be used to identify a controlled drug, a prescription-only medicine or a psychoactive substance in the resident’s body.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on his own experience with Bills, which he has recently acquired, I think. Does he agree that enabling testing for a wider range of substances ought to prevent those living in approved premises who are tempted to take these substances from doing so, because they know that they can be detected for longer? It might help those living in approved premises to not reoffend.

Terrorist Incident at Liverpool Women’s Hospital

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As the right hon. Gentleman points out, I cannot comment on this. I know that there has been a lot of speculation about the nature of the explosion, but, as I understand it from a briefing just this morning, the forensic examination is yet to be completed. Once it is, we will be able to draw some lessons about the particular combustion and the explosive chemicals that may or may not have been used, and then we can take action accordingly.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

As somebody who was nearby, at Liverpool’s Remembrance Day service at the Anglican cathedral, at the time of the explosion, along with 2,000 to 3,000 other people, I want to join in commending Merseyside police and the fire and rescue services in particular for their swift and effective action to keep the city and its citizens safe.

Liverpool is a city that believes in solidarity and helping others, as we have seen in my constituency, where hundreds of recently arrived Afghan people, themselves fleeing terror, are staying as they adjust to new lives in the UK. What more will the Government do to ensure that any threats to community cohesion and safety that arise out of these circumstances—there are people out there, not necessarily from the city, who want to cause trouble—are minimised and that no one is allowed to use the events to stoke community tensions?

[Kit Malthouse]

I join the hon. Lady in congratulating Merseyside police, which is one of our highest-performing police forces across the country, having had a series of great leaders as chief constables, not least the current one. Andy Cooke, who led it before, was also an outstanding leader of that force, which has achieved amazing results. The fact it was able to deal with this incident so swiftly, at the same time as dealing with a major public event not very far away, is a great testament to its skill.

On the community work, the hon. Lady will be reassured to know that colleagues in the community arm of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities are engaging with the local authorities in Liverpool to make sure that we do what we can to reassure the local community and keep it as united as it has hitherto been.

Hillsborough: Collapse of Trials

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make a statement on the collapse of trials relating to the Hillsborough disaster and subsequent developments.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)]

I am sure that the whole House would want to join me in paying tribute to the immense courage, determination and patience of the families of the 96 people who died in the Hillsborough disaster, and of those injured who, 32 years on, continue to grieve about the events of that truly terrible day.

The collapse of the case concerning two former police officers and a solicitor who are charged with perverting the course of justice for allegedly having altered statements to be provided to the 1990 Taylor inquiry was the final opportunity for the families seeking justice for what happened at Hillsborough. As the House will have seen, the trial judge in that case ruled that the offence of perverting the course of justice could not have been committed because the inquiry was carrying out an administrative function for the Home Secretary and was not a process of public justice. As such, the prosecution was not able to establish a key element of the offence of perverting the course of justice and the case was unable to proceed any further. Of course, as Lord Chancellor, it is my duty to respect that decision.

Since the Taylor inquiry, the Inquiries Act 2005 was introduced, which allows inquiries to take evidence on oath and to compel witnesses to give evidence and to produce documentary evidence. Section 35 of that Act also makes it an offence to commit acts that intend to have the effect of distorting, altering or preventing evidence from being given to the statutory inquiry. It is also an offence intentionally to suppress or to conceal a relevant document or to destroy such a document.

Members will be rightly concerned as to what, if any, effect this may have on current public inquiries, such as the Grenfell inquiry, the undercover policing inquiry and the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.

Each of those are statutory inquiries and each has been set up under the aegis of the 2005 Act, which means that, should someone seek to distort, destroy, conceal or suppress evidence in any of those inquiries, that Act provides that those actions will constitute a specific criminal offence. Indeed, the common law offence of perverting the course of justice may also be an appropriate offence to charge if the elements of that offence are made out.

We recognise the need for those in public office to act responsibly and to discharge their duties with both honesty and integrity. As we continue to consider the judgment in the latest Hillsborough trial and its implications, we will of course always consider opportunities to review the law and how it operates. I want the families to know that there will be no exception in this case. We are carefully considering the points made by the former Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, in his 2017 report on the experiences of the Hillsborough families, including in relation to the proposed duty of candour. Our focus now, after the trial’s conclusion, will be on publishing the Government’s overarching response to that report, after having further consulted all the families.

Irrespective of the outcome of this case, the Government continue to be committed to engaging with the survivors and the bereaved families. It is critical that the lessons of the Hillsborough tragedy—the Hillsborough disaster—are not only learned but consistently applied so that something similar can never be allowed to happen again. The Government are absolutely determined to do just that.

[Mr Speaker]

This is a very important urgent question and I wanted to make sure that it was debated, quite rightly, today. The Lord Chancellor took longer than I expected, so if Members feel they need to take longer, will they please bear in mind that I want to make sure that everybody gets a fair chance to have their say about this very important matter?

[Maria Eagle]

I thank Lord Chancellor for his careful and thoughtful words.

It is 32 years since the 96 people were unlawfully killed having gone to watch a football match, primarily through the gross negligence of the South Yorkshire police who should have been protecting them. Five years since the inquest verdicts, after six men were charged with 14 offences, only two charges were even put to the jury. Twelve charges were thrown out or withdrawn and just one conviction was secured, for a health and safety breach, resulting in a £6,500 fine. Yet since 2016, the families and survivors have been silenced to prevent any prejudice to the criminal proceedings, necessitating the cancellation of all public memorial services, including the 30th anniversary, and preventing them from correcting the record when the Hillsborough slurs about fans causing the disaster have been repeated—and they have been repeated in court and outside court.

Does the Lord Chancellor agree that it is a catastrophic failure of our criminal justice system that nobody has been held accountable for these killings and that it has taken 32 years for things to fail so badly? Does he think that the Crown Prosecution Service has any questions to answer about the charges laid, the vigour with which they were fought, and the CPS’s failure to challenge the reintroduction of the Hillsborough slurs when the families themselves could not because they were silenced? Does he accept that the utter failure, over 32 years, of our criminal justice system to do justice for these people requires changes of the law to make sure that families who are bereaved in public disasters never again have to endure this extended ordeal, after so many years trying to get truth and justice?

The Lord Chancellor seemed to say that he wants to learn lessons, and I welcome that, so will he consider enacting measures in the Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill, which is designed to stop things going wrong in the first place—that is the key to stopping things going wrong in respect of public disasters—and in the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill? Will he work with those of us in this House who have been campaigning on this issue to get it right for the future?

Since the collapse of the trials, two defence barristers have repeated the Hillsborough slurs in public. This matters so much to the families—the cover-up has been denied—so does the Lord Chancellor agree that it now has to stop? Will he make it clear that it must stop and that the apology that the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, gave in this House matters now as much as it did then and sets the record straight? Does he agree that the idea that it is lawful for a public authority to withhold information from an inquiry established to identify why 96 people died at a football event and to learn lessons, and for a solicitor to advise such a step, cannot be right and must be changed?

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I pay tribute to her for the consistent work that she continues to do in this area. She has asked a number of questions, and she will perhaps forgive me if I cannot answer them with absolute specificity, but I will do my very best. I will start by reiterating the apology that David Cameron made. That is the Government’s position—no ifs, no buts.

With regard to the prosecution, clearly, it was right for the case to be brought and, as I have said, as Lord Chancellor, I have to respect the process. However, that has had quite a consequence for the families.

The important work that now needs to be done by colleagues in the Home Office—I have taken the trouble to speak to Home Office officials this morning—is to focus on Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report and work with the families to ensure that those recommendations are carried out. The focus has to be unrelenting, and I want this to take months, not years. Obviously, the families need to be at the heart of it—“nothing about them without them” clearly has to be the watchword—and I am confident, in the light of the work done by David Cameron, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and now by the Home Office, that that approach will very much be taken.

In regard to the work that the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and others, including Lord Wills, have been doing on the independent public advocate, I want to assure the hon. Lady that we are absolutely committed to ensuring that bereaved people are supported and given a proper voice throughout the process. A Government consultation was conducted in 2018, and the responses to it were rather varied. I propose to do some more work on that process more swiftly, and to bottom-out what the options might be in ensuring that any service is independent, has the confidence of those who use it and makes a difference, particularly in major public inquiries where many lives have been lost. I know that that has been the focus. I will work with the hon. Lady to ensure that the consultation will look at what the threshold might look like and at the overall impact. I do not think we need to create some huge public body; I know that that is not the hon. Lady’s intention. I now want to give this careful and close attention, and I am sure she will work with me on that.

It is good to note that a lot of work has already been done with regard to legal aid eligibility. We have, in effect, ended any means test on legal aid for legal help and, indeed, representation by the use of the exceptional cases funding category of legal aid. That was an important and welcome initiative. We must also bear in mind the work done by Mr Nick Hurd, a former Member of this House, as the Prime Minister’s adviser and envoy on the Grenfell inquiry. I want to make sure that the correlation of that type of role is fully understood in the concept of a potential independent public advocate. I am sure that the hon. Lady and I will have further exchanges, and I am sure she will forgive me if I have not answered every specific question that she has asked. I am profoundly grateful to her for her urgent question today.

Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab) [V]]

I want to address the question of enshrining victims’ rights in law and discuss a particular group of victims: bereaved families and survivors of public disasters. I have been raising matters for and speaking on behalf of the Hillsborough families, some of whom are my constituents, since I was elected in 1997. On 26 May, the final criminal trial arising out of the unlawful killing of 96 children, women and men collapsed. There is now no prospect of anyone responsible for the gross negligence of South Yorkshire police on that day being held to account by our criminal justice system, nor will anyone be held to account for the subsequent police cover-up, in which police sought to deflect blame on to the victims and survivors of the disaster and away from themselves.

This has led to so much anguish and pain for the families and survivors over the last 32 years, as they have repeatedly had to defend the reputations of their wholly innocent lost loved ones and fellow fans. Despite David Cameron having apologised to the families and survivors from the Dispatch Box when he was Prime Minister in 2012 for the police cover-up, last week a defence barrister involved in the collapsed trial repeated the slurs about Liverpool fans on the BBC, and another denied that there had been a cover-up in an article in The Spectator. The very next day, an agreement by South Yorkshire police and West Midlands police to make payments and civil damages to 601 family members and survivors for the further psychological distress caused by that very cover-up was made public.

It cannot be right that these untrue claims are still made with impunity. Families should not have to spend 32 years defending the reputations of their lost loved ones. While this is an extreme case, there have been other disasters where the victims have been blamed or families have been unable to find out the truth of what happened and have been marginalised, ignored and not seen as central to legal and administrative proceedings. It seems likely that there will be more such instances in future if nothing changes.

It took the Hillsborough families 23 years of non-stop battling to have the truth of what happened to their loved ones acknowledged officially, 28 years to get correct inquest verdicts and 32 years in total until all the criminal prosecutions arising out of the disaster came to an end. That is far, far too long. The law needs to be changed to make provision for proper, bespoke support at an early stage for those bereaved in public disasters. I do not just mean legal advice. Once things go wrong, it is almost impossible to put them right. Things have to be done properly from the start.

There are a number of proposals that would make a difference, and I urge the Government to adopt them. The establishment of an independent public advocate—which, as the Lord Chancellor knows, I have a ready-made Bill to do—is key to preventing things from going wrong in the first place. It uses freedom of information and transparency—the principles underlying the operation of the Hillsborough independent panel—to prevent cover-ups from happening and to ensure that bereaved families are at the heart of proceedings. Measures in the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill on a duty of candour and equality of arms at inquests would help.

I hope the Lord Chancellor agrees that the law must be changed to prevent bereaved families in public disasters from ever again being treated like the Hillsborough families have been treated. I hope he agrees that that would be a fitting tribute to their 32-year campaign for truth and justice. As my constituents bereaved or affected by Hillsborough said to me when I met them after I was elected 24 years ago, we do not want this to happen to anyone else. It is incumbent on all of us in this place to make sure that it cannot ever happen again.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Maria Eagle Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 2
Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab) [V]]

This 300-page incoherent mish-mash of a Bill contains some truly odious measures, and I have time to deal with only one of them: the dangerous and unjustifiable crackdown on the freedom to protest in clauses 54 to 60. Those clauses alone are enough for me to vote against Second Reading tonight, despite the Bill containing some good measures.

This populist Government have swiftly developed a penchant for authoritarianism, born of their approach to getting the vast amount of Brexit legislation necessary through Parliament. They have got into the habit of writing framework Bills with extensive Henry VIII powers, leaving vast scope for Ministers to change primary legislation by personal fiat, without adequate parliamentary scrutiny. This trend has been made worse by the necessity to legislate swiftly for public health reasons because of covid, again with no scrutiny ahead of laws being brought into force. The coronavirus crisis has led to a draconian removal of basic liberties that is necessary temporarily for health reasons, but not for a minute to be thought of as desirable. The Government now want to make this emergency way of doing things the norm, to enable police officers to have far too much power effectively to silence any protest.

We have a Government who attack judges who decide cases in ways they do not approve of; some Law Officers who will not defend the independence of the judiciary; a Government who legislate to enable themselves to break a treaty that they have only just signed; Ministers, including the Home Secretary, who break the ministerial code with impunity, while senior civil servants they disagree with are hounded out of their jobs; and a Government who now want to take the power to ban demonstrations or vigils if they are too noisy—they are literally silencing any protest they do not like.

This legislation allows for convictions for breach of conditions that the police have imposed, even where the person on trial has no knowledge of what that condition was; it increases the punishment for such a breach from 12 weeks to 51 weeks in prison. The Home Secretary seems to have hijacked what was a worthy enough sentencing Bill to insert her divisive and polarising measures on protests. The original timetable for the Bill gave the game away. It was due to be completed in time for the police and crime commissioner elections in May. This is being done to enable the Government to claim that their political opponents are not supporting the police enough—indeed, we have already heard speeches from some Government Back Benchers claiming just that.

There has been no real focus on how the law should be changed for the good of society. For example, we have just seen how much it fails to meet the needs of women, who just want to be safe. This Bill just does not tackle any of those issues. Clauses 54 to 60 are intended to destroy the fundamental rights of citizens in our democracy to protest, and just for some cheap headlines ahead of an election. The Bill is draconian and undesirable, and the Government should not get away with enacting it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman can be reassured: he knows that I believe in equality before the law, and that is why I refrain from making comments about individual cases. I respect the decisions made by the police independently and, indeed, by the Crown Prosecution Service and any other prosecutorial authority either north or south of the border.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

What steps he plans to take to help people who are bereaved after a public disaster.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

The Government are determined to ensure that those who are bereaved after a public disaster are treated with respect and compassion, and get answers. That is why the Government ran a consultation exercise on a proposal for an independent public advocate, and we will publish a response in due course. In addition, earlier this year the Government published a revised guide to coroner services to promote effective participation for bereaved people at inquests. On 23 March this year, the Prime Minister appointed Nick Hurd as an independent adviser working with Grenfell Tower communities to represent their views at the heart of Government.

[Maria Eagle]

I thank the Minister for that answer. He will know that under the ten-minute rule procedure in this House, I have introduced the Public Advocate Bill, which is informed by the experience of more than 30 years of campaigning by the Hillsborough families and survivors, and that Lord Michael Wills has introduced it in the other place. Next time the Minister gets a chance to speak to the Lord Chancellor, will he ask him if he will meet Lord Wills and me to see whether the proposals on which the Government have consulted can be strengthened to ensure that they meet the needs of those bereaved by public disasters, because thousands more of our fellow citizens could now benefit from us getting these provisions right?

[Alex Chalk]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and pay tribute to her for the campaigning that she has done on this issue. I had the opportunity to speak to my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor just a few seconds ago; he will be happy to have the meeting that she requests.