Hillsborough Disaster

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

May I say how humbling was the address by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts)? I know that he is a football fan to his very core, and the emotion with which he spoke touched Members on both sides of the House. I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on a job well done so far; he has represented his constituency fantastically well, and the people of Liverpool brilliantly, and he deserves great commendation for that.

Like many other Members, I would like to thank the 140,000 people who signed the petition. I very much like this new type of democracy that we are bringing to this place. Democracy evolves, and the fact that this debate is taking place is possibly the best testament to the new process. Obviously, I pay tribute to the families of the 96.

I also want to pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). The passion in his words spoke volumes, and all the work that he, with other colleagues, has put into instigating the Hillsborough independent panel is very much appreciated. I hope that he is satisfied with the words that he heard from the Home Secretary, and with the tone in which they were uttered.

Like everyone in this debate, I can remember exactly what I was doing on 15 April 1989. I was starting a business, and I was in the John Lewis store in Oxford Circus, trying to foist some of my new business’s produce on to the customers going by. I knew that some fantastic games of football were about to start, and I kept trying to steal away from what I was hoping to be my new career to catch a few tiny moments of each game. The match should have been, as most other FA cup semi-finals are, a fantastic game of football, with controversy and memorable incidents on the football pitch, but they should have had to do with football, not what we now remember that date and game for. Twenty-two years later, people really should not still be unable to get the complete truth. How can one learn from the lessons of the past if one is not presented with all the information?

I read the Taylor report, and it is obvious from what many Members have said that there was a complete breakdown in communication in the police. Liverpool fans were magnificent in the way they helped each other on that day, after the tragedy. It is unbelievable that the emergency services were so slow in responding, and that ambulances were kept outside the stadium. Hooliganism played no part whatever; police failure was the cause. Police practice was to blame.

I do not want to reiterate everything that has been said; I want to give a slightly different perspective. The first is from someone I do not know: the Liverpool goal-keeper at the time, Bruce Grobbelaar. I remember reading an interview with him in which he said:

“Two minutes into the game, I was aware of a surge behind me. I saw the movement out of the corner of my eye, and I heard a lot of shouting, a lot of noise.

The ball went into that section soon after, and as it was returned, there were voices coming from below me.

As I looked down into the front of those pens, I could see people pressed up against the mesh. The wire was digging into their faces, and people were shouting: ‘Bruce, can you help us, please? We can’t breathe.’

What was I to do? I’m about to take a goalkick in this massive game, but all I could think of was those contorted faces and people crying for help. After clearing the ball, I remember shouting to a steward to do something.

The ball went out and I started bellowing at a policeman standing by a gate to open it. He said he couldn’t and would have to liaise with his colleagues. There was a sense of panic.

When the ball sailed into the crowd for a third time, I could see people being lifted out of those terraces. There were screams and cries all around which I’ll never forget, and I shouted to the policeman: ‘Please open that gate, before it’s too late. Please.’

When the ball went out again I made a bee-line for the ref. I pointed to the scenes behind my goal, and he only needed to look once.

The gate had been opened, and people were beginning to pour onto the pitch. We were six minutes into the game, and he turned to all the players, and said: ‘Right, we’ve got to get off.’”

Members of the House probably do not know that I have been a qualified, active football referee since the age of 12. I was signed up to do that by my dad’s best friend, a football referee of the highest quality. His name was Ray Lewis, and he was the referee at Hillsborough on that day. He is very much on the record about what, in his view, happened behind the scenes. He said that when he attended the police briefing 90 minutes before the game, there was nothing to suggest that there would be problems at the game. There was no reason to believe that there was a problem leading up to the kick-off. When the game got under way, he could see the beginnings of problems at the Leppings Lane end, but there had been problems at that end in previous games—lessons that had not been learned.

When Mr Lewis was eventually told by South Yorkshire police at 3.6 pm to stop the game, the full gravity of the situation simply was not clear, as the hon. Member for Sheffield South East has said. Minute by minute, hour by hour, the horror of what had happened in front of Mr Lewis began to unfold. He was told of the first fatality at 3.40 pm. He said:

“To a certain extent you are shocked and numbed.”

He had gone to referee one of the biggest games of football in his life, and he came away having experienced one of the worst possible situations that can be put before anybody. The corridors and the referee’s office were used for first aid, and the majority of people who came into that area were suffering from shock, rather than life-threatening injuries. People simply were not aware, until 3.40 pm, of the extent of the problem outside.

Like many in the House who were present, Mr Lewis called it the blackest day of his life. Twenty years on, like many in this place, he went to the memorial service at Anfield, Liverpool’s home ground, and experienced the unbelievably magnificent show of support that probably only the city of Liverpool can generate for its football fans. He completely understands the continuing passion of the families of the 96, and what they have been fighting for.

Like many in this House, I love the city of Liverpool. It brings so much to our wonderful country. When one tries to put oneself in the position of the parents and relatives of the people who passed away on that day, it can only lead to demanding the full disclosure of every document, in the method described by Members on both sides of the House. Allow the families of the 96 finally to come to terms with these tragic events.