Criminal Justice System: Families Bereaved by Public Disasters

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for everything that she has done for Hillsborough survivors and families. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for allowing me leave from the Building Safety Bill Committee. I know that he and my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) both desperately wanted to attend this debate; however, they have to attend the Committee to scrutinise the Bill, so I place this on record on their behalf and for their constituents.

On Wednesday 26 May 2021, the British legal system and the establishment delivered their final insult to the families and survivors of Hillsborough, after three decades of what felt like a targeted attack on them and on a city. Ninety-seven people were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough, due to police gross negligence. A nightmare 32-year ordeal through the British legal system has ended with an outcome that feels like a final insult. Mr Justice William Davis’s ruling in May acquitted two ex-South Yorkshire police officers and the force’s former lawyer of perverting the course of justice by amending police statements. Mr Justice Davis’s view, apparently, is that the police officers and their solicitor could, in principle, legally withhold crucial evidence from the Taylor inquiry.

The result is that nobody has been held accountable for the needless deaths, injuries and enduring trauma suffered at Hillsborough, despite the 2016 inquest verdicts that the 96—now 97—victims were unlawfully killed due to the disastrous actions of the police and the officer in command, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield. Is it any wonder that faith in the legal system has been utterly corroded for many after the experiences suffered?

This can never be repeated. Justice has been denied for so many. That is why the proposed Bill and set of reforms matter so much. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) has been a champion of the families and survivors since her election; I thank her for everything she has done for them. She will never know how much it has meant.

My own experience will be familiar to many survivors, but I would like to take the House back to a 16-year-old in 1989—how his view of the establishment was shaped and why this Bill matters so much to him. I watched the horrors of Hillsborough unfold from the side pen because of fate.

In 1988, I had stood with my two friends directly behind the goal—it was edgy, but we walked out celebrating a great victory and got home safely. In 1989, we had another Kopite with us. We headed back to the same place for the big game hours before, full of excitement and anticipation, like so many others. My friend started feeling extremely uncomfortable with the numbers, and we decided to move our way back down the tunnel to a side pen. That was fate, because it was before Duckenfield made his disastrous decision. I am sure all four of us who were there, and who are now parents and grandparents, thank whatever powers made us take that fateful decision to move.

I knew my dad and his mates—

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ian Byrne]

Yes.

[Sir George Howarth]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful and suitably emotional case. As he knows, I spent a day at the original inquest; does he agree that that inquest, which thankfully was overturned later, was an absolute travesty of what should have taken place? A few moments ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) talked about the importance of truth; an inquest should be the occasion on which we get the truth, but that inquest did not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Byrne]

Absolutely. I thank my right hon. Friend.

I knew my dad and his mates were also in the stadium, along with many of my friends from school and my area. You immediately think of your nearest and dearest, while watching events, powerless to do anything, next to the pens. I will never, ever forget the kindness of the people of Sheffield who, as we walked home to the station, numbed, were asking whether we wanted to phone home to tell our families that we were safe. Like many others, I had family and friends in Leppings Lane, and—this was before we had mobile phones and social media—we were hearing rumours of how many people were injured and how many had died. So it was a long, long journey home. In the next few days, I got the call from my dad saying he was okay, plus his friends. But then the calls came telling us we had lost friends from school and our community. It is something you never forget. Thirty-seven people who died at Hillsborough were teenagers.

Back in 1989, the printed media were all-powerful, and in the days after the disaster, when you were trying to come to terms with what had happened and process it, we had the infamous headline from the rag I will not name. The “Truth” headline made me, at 16 years of age, question my own sanity. I had watched the fans supporting each other, giving mouth-to-mouth on the pitch, ferrying the injured on stretchers—how could this be what the media were saying? Then we had South Yorkshire police initiate the smears and lies that reverberated around the world, backed by the Prime Minister of the day, Margaret Thatcher, and her press officer, Bernard Ingham. The narrative was all-powerful and the establishment was spinning it for all it was worth. And we had a set of fans and a city that never stood a chance. In the face of the unrelenting media onslaught and spin, if I was questioning my own eyes, how easy was it for the vast majority of this nation—and, indeed, the world—to swallow the orchestra of lies that was the establishment’s version of Hillsborough?

In the weeks after Hillsborough, when we had laid our scarves on the hallowed turf at Anfield and laid our friends to rest, I was visited by two police officers from the West Midlands police force to take my version of events on that fateful day. We sat down in my living room—I was 16—and the first and last question was, “How much alcohol had you drunk on the day, Ian?” I asked them to leave—that is the polite version for this Chamber—and that was my first taste, in person, of the cover-up by the respective police forces. That is why the proposed reforms—the Public Advocate Bill, the Hillsborough law and the set of measures that have been so well outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood—matter. We cannot ever allow the events and response after a disaster to be shaped by the perpetrators and the innocent to be smeared and denied justice. We cannot ever again allow mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters to go through the pain and agony that the families and survivors of Hillsborough endured.

If we learn one thing from the greatest miscarriage of justice ever seen in this country it must be this: truth and justice must be something that every victim of a disaster can expect to receive from the state. The template must be the Hillsborough independent panel, which changed everything. I am eternally grateful to the politicians who enabled it and to the panel members for their work in giving the world the true story of the Hillsborough disaster.

In this fight for truth and justice, I have met some of the greatest people I will ever meet in my life—through the tragedy of Hillsborough. These are the people and experiences that have shaped my life and my thinking. Over the last three decades, I have watched politicians from both side of this House betray the families and dismiss their version of events, afraid of upsetting the establishment narrative. And some on this side still pander to the media barons responsible for the headlines that have caused such anguish to our people and city. It is hard to swallow now that we know the real truth.

The decision by a judge in May to ensure that no one was held accountable for 97 unlawful killings, after 32 years of lies, smears and cover-ups, was a bitter pill to swallow for so many. I personally feel a huge sense of responsibility—as a 16-year-old boy at Hillsborough who has travelled to these green Benches—to the families, survivors and my city to do everything in my power to ensure that we have some form of legacy from an establishment that owes us.

My esteemed colleague’s Bill and its proposed reforms will give some comfort to the families and survivors that other families involved in any future disaster will not face what befell them after the fateful day of 15 April 1989. I wholly support the Public Advocate Bill and I urge the Minister to do the same.