Lord Hanson of Flint
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The Shrewsbury 24
Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Like me, he worked in the mining industry, which saw some of the most horrific accident and death statistics going back centuries. We fought against that and turned it around in the mining industry. The people in the building industry were trying to do exactly what we did. They wanted to bring to the building sites the sort of legislation and protection that we had achieved, sometimes through industrial action, but also through coming into this place and getting legislation passed to protect people at work. That is what these men were doing. They also wanted a decent living wage, because £30 was not a lot of money in 1972. They wanted a reasonable pay rise, but they were also defending people’s lives and limbs.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
May I ask the Minister a question through my hon. Friend? Why is it that the Government are reducing the 30-year rule to 20 years, yet in correspondence on this matter with me the Ministry of Justice has increased the information release date from 30 years to 40 years? My five constituents, who are among the names mentioned by my hon. Friend, cannot get justice until 2022, when many of them will be very old indeed.
Mr Anderson
My right hon. Friend asks a very valid question, and I hope that we get an answer from the Minister. It beggars belief. We know the context in which this case took place. We had industrial strife in a number of industries and obviously a lot was happening in Northern Ireland. We also know the context of police behaviour in the 1970s, because it is now coming out through things such as the Saville and Hillsborough inquiries, issues relating to the miners’ strike at Orgreave and the behaviour of the security services in relation to the Birmingham and Guildford bombings, for example. We are talking about 24 men among a larger group who went to a picket line. On the day, not one of them was charged, warned or arrested. If they had done something that warranted arrest, they would have been arrested there and then—not five months later, not after a fishing expedition, but on the day.