Hillsborough

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend asks an important question. I think that to answer it properly I will have to go away and look at all the things that have changed in the nature of establishing inquests and public inquiries, because we have probably made quite a few steps forward. However, to be fair to Lord Taylor and his report, it came down to what the families and others saw as the right conclusion—that a mistake by the police was the principal cause of the problem. One of the deeper problems in this whole case was that after that public inquiry, there was then the questionable inquest and the media narrative that sought to undermine what Lord Taylor had found. My hon. Friend makes the important point that we should try to learn the lessons about how, broadly, to hold inquiries and inquests and how important it is to make sure that they have access to all the information at the time.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I, too, add my voice to those who have thanked the Prime Minister, not just for his statement but for the sincerity with which it was made, and for the revelation that the appalling vista has become the atrocious truth. However, the sad fact remains that there is no effective sanction against an unwise and careless media. That issue still has to be addressed, and The Sun still has to be faced with the lies that it heaped upon the heads of the bereaved.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The Leveson inquiry is separately looking at the whole issue of how the press is regulated and how mistakes that are made are properly corrected. I think that everybody, including those in the press, recognises that the current system is not working and needs to be strengthened. There is then the whole question of whether that happens through strengthened self-regulation, independent regulation or statutory regulation, but that is what Leveson is there to look at.