Hillsborough

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and David Anderson

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I would hope not. My point is that if he suspended himself and removed himself from any investigation, the public could have faith in any report that is produced. I did not level the new charge—that he tried to interfere with West Yorkshire policy authority—against him; it was the IPCC that levelled that charge. After 23 years, the public must have faith in any report that is brought out.

[Mr Anderson]

Is it not a fact that in the vast majority of employment cases, where an issue is raised or accusations are made against a worker—and this man is a worker—that worker would almost certainly be suspended, regardless of what they had to say about the allegations? If the allegations were made, they would be suspended, particularly in order to prevent any interference with any records or paperwork. That would happen to virtually anybody in this country, so why should it not happen to this man?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He will have heard me intervene on the shadow Home Secretary earlier. Her answer made it very clear that she and the Home Secretary did not have the ability to be involved, which is why I said that if there is a mechanism whereby the person in question can offer himself for suspension, that is what should happen. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not casting judgment on him; what I am saying is that this House, the public, the victims and their families need to know that when this process is finished, no more questions will be left unanswered. There should be no more theories about whether someone influenced a report; only then can peace be brought to those families. They must know that the full truth is out there; those found to be responsible must face up to the consequences; and we must close this dreadful, shameful chapter in our country’s history.

Finally, I want to make a point about what my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) said. I simply cannot understand how such an experienced politician as the then Member of Parliament for Sheffield, Hallam was able to go to journalists and report as fact rumours about which he had been told. I am thinking particularly of what appears on page 351 of the report, to which my hon. Friend referred:

“‘Some of the supporters were pissed out of their minds. They were pissing on us while we were pulling the dead and injured out…they were swearing at us kicking and punching us and hampering our work’. One seated showed me the marks of the kicks on his left trouser leg and the marks on his skin.”

The report goes on to mention what fans were said to have yelled about what they would do with a girl who was naked. An off-duty sergeant is said to have given this information to the then Member of Parliament. We also read on page 351 that

“‘senior officers advised Mr Patnick to take what he had heard ‘with a pinch of salt’.”

Those accusations should make every one of us angry. I am angry, and I cannot imagine what the families must feel about the fact that a Member of this House fed those allegations to the newspapers, and into the general stream of information that was going around the country, when a senior police officer had told him to take them with a pinch of salt.

At the end of the process, those who are found to have deliberately peddled that story must be prosecuted for defamation of character, because that is what it was: besmirching the names of the dead was a defamation of character. It is not good enough, and I hope that we shall never see a repeat of it in the House. I also hope that one outcome will be that we all remember—this was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock—that we, as politicians, are in a very powerful position. Our words matter, and we must never peddle rumours and, consequently, untruths.