Hillsborough

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

I begin my short contribution by acknowledging the work of the panel, and in particularly the Bishop of Liverpool, as all hon. Members have done, and I pay tribute to the families. On Friday, I spoke to the BBC about a constituent who lost her boy on the island of Kos 21 years ago. I said that it is impossible to understand what it is like to lose a child. All hon. Members must acknowledge that if they have not lost a loved one or a child in tragic circumstances, it is impossible to understand it, but we can understand and be amazed by the strength and courage of the families over the past 23 years, and acknowledge that, without their campaign, we would not be where we are today. The House has acknowledged that fully.

I should refer first to the culture that informed the management of football in 1989. It was, of course, a culture that encouraged the characterisation of football fans as heavy-drinking hooligans. My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) pointed out, rightly, that having a drink before or at a football match does not make someone a hooligan or mean that they have done anything wrong. The stereotype was far from being true. The vast majority of fans, even if they do have a drink, are genuine fans and law-abiding citizens. Even then, many fans going to football matches were part of families—dads taking sons, dads taking daughters, mums and dads taking their children. That is something that we should always remember.

Nevertheless, the stereotype of the hooligan was very powerful, and it underpinned an approach by the authorities that led to fans being treated as something less than human. It had three tragic consequences at Hillsborough. One was the erection of the barriers, way before 1989, to prevent fans from going on to the pitch. The second was the crush itself, which was thought at first by the police to be the result of hooliganism. When the crush occurred, the police thought that it was hooligans kicking off. The final consequence was the vilification of fans by South Yorkshire police, the direct consequence of an all too easy assumption that any trouble at a football match is down to the behaviour of the fans.

Justice has to be delivered, and I welcome the referrals to the IPCC and the involvement of Keir Starmer in the ongoing investigations. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary said earlier, the investigation is in two parts. We have the events leading up to the disaster and the cover-up in what happened afterwards. We have to have a thorough investigation and, if there is clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing, charges have to be laid and those accused should answer those charges in court.

The cover-up was especially shocking because it was so deliberate and led to the vilification of the fans for all these years. The investigation of South Yorkshire police and the cover-up has to take place in the context—there is no point in avoiding it—of the screening tonight of a programme about a cover-up and the changing of statements about an earlier event in south Yorkshire. It is clear that there was a culture, and we need to ensure that there is a thorough and rigorous investigation of that culture in relation to both Hillsborough and any other aspect of policing in the 1980s, so that we can defend the integrity and standards of British policing in the long term. If we are to continue to have policing by consent, we have to get to the bottom of what was happening to policing in the 1980s. I suspect that it was not just a problem in the South Yorkshire police and that the problem went beyond that force—we already know that Hillsborough also involved the West Midlands force.

I have been clear about the need for rigorous criminal inquiries with no holds barred in getting to the bottom of what went wrong, but it is also important to recognise that the South Yorkshire force is very different now. It has moved forward. It is not perfect by any means—far from it, as recent events have shown—but it is important to remember that it has made progress under two former chief constables, Richard Wells and Med Hughes, and we now have David Crompton. It was Med Hughes who, readily and without question, agreed to release the South Yorkshire police archives for the purposes of the panel’s work. We need to acknowledge that, and we also need to remember that football policing in Sheffield has improved radically in recent years. Police officers in charge of policing at Hillsborough and at Bramall Lane have to be accredited and trained, and anyone taking command at Hillsborough has to have significant experience, especially when taking charge of a big match such as a local derby. I need to say that for the sake not just of South Yorkshire police, but for police morale across the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said earlier. If the public are to continue to have confidence in the ability of the South Yorkshire police force to protect our streets, we have to say now, publicly, that it is different from the force that was functioning in 1989.

Equally, Sheffield Wednesday football club is a different club. Bert McGee went a long time ago. It has a different structure now. In fact, the previous club was dissolved and we have a new club with new personnel and new people in charge. The chairman and those new people did not hesitate to release their documentation to the panel so that it could be as thorough as possible in reaching its conclusions. Sheffield Wednesday is not perfect in how it functions—no club is—but progress has been made, and that should be put on the record in the context of this debate.

We have to address the injustices of the past, but we must also recognise progress. More than anything else, we need lessons relating to accountability and transparency arising from Hillsborough to be learnt and applied. I therefore welcome the commitment from the Home Secretary to bring forward proposals in the new year, and I look forward to being able to examine them. I welcome the consensus that appears to be growing on this issue across the House. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary made it clear that the House will work collaboratively to ensure that we learn the lessons and move forward on the key fundamental issue of police accountability and transparency. There is no other guarantee for public confidence in policing other than the ability to see what is going on within the police, and the knowledge that they are doing their job properly and with integrity. Transparency is the only means by which we can properly guarantee that that is the case.

More than anything else, I look forward to moving on with justice delivered and with our progress towards the highest ethical standards in policing hastened by what we have learned from Hillsborough. I look forward to that in the name of all those who died so needlessly that day, in the name of a sport that is enjoyed by millions but which needs to be enjoyed safely, and in the name of the absolute need for policing that we know we can trust.

[Several hon. Members]

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