Police (Complaints and Conduct) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, the report published on 12 September by the Hillsborough Independent Panel, chaired by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, meticulously examined every aspect of the disaster at the Hillsborough Stadium on 15 April 1989, in which 90 men, women and children lost their lives.

The right reverend Prelate, from whom we will hear shortly, and those who worked with him deserve our gratitude and wholehearted appreciation. Their report exposed a number of significant failures and associated shortcomings in the investigation that followed the disaster. The welcome Bill before us today emerged from their findings. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, for the way in which he introduced the debate on what, as he said, is an exceptional Bill.

The Independent Panel’s report concluded that police and emergency services had made “strenuous attempts” to deflect the blame for the disaster on to fans. One hundred and sixty-four police statements had been altered, 116 of them to remove or change negative comments about the policing of the match. The report also said that 41 of the 96 who had died had had the “potential to survive”—grounds, certainly, for ordering new inquests.

Lives that were lost can never be brought back but it has given significant comfort to those personally affected by Hillsborough that Parliament has at last recognised that a terrible tragedy was compounded by injustice and falsification, as the noble Lord said. Flawed and delayed investigations do significant damage to delicate and crucial finely balanced police-public relationships, and this Bill is a recognition of that. The Bill—and the new inquests—will allow the Independent Police Complaints Commission to bring some solace to the families and their supporters, whose signal resolution and dignity have been exemplary.

Twenty-three years ago, one of my saddest duties as a Liverpool Member of Parliament was visiting families of those bereaved at Hillsborough. Several of my constituents had died, including a child. Another, Andrew Devine, then aged 22, was left in a persistent vegetative state. Andrew was caught in the crush, deprived of oxygen, and following the resultant brain damage his parents were told that he would die within months. Ever since, his extraordinary parents, Hilary and Stanley, have lovingly cared for Andrew, who emerged from his coma in 1994.

The deaths of 96 people and the long-term trauma were compounded by the infamous aftermath, which combined vilification and procrastination. Agony was piled upon agony with the insulting and wholly fallacious attempts to smear and blame the victims. They had, it was suggested, brought the calamity of Hillsborough on themselves. Thanks to the Independent Panel’s report, 23 years later that calumny has finally been laid to rest.

For me, however, the most shocking aspect of the tragedy has always been that it could have been averted and that it had been predicted. In the month before the match, a Liverpool fan who had witnessed an earlier game at Hillsborough told me that staging the semi-final at Hillsborough would be unsafe. Following that conversation, I wrote to the then Sports Minister, Colin—now the noble Lord—Moynihan, to express my concern. This correspondence is referred to in a parliamentary reply which appears in Hansard. In 1989, the Minister said:

“The hon. Member wrote to me on 22 March about the arrangements at the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough on 15 April. No other representation was received. The arrangements for the match will be among the matters to be considered by Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/89; col. 414.]

So ground safety and ticket allocation at Hillsborough had been an issue before the game. Many of us were reassured that Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry would examine why sufficient weight was not attached to those concerns, as well as examining the events of the day.

Although much-needed changes would subsequently be made to ground safety, Liverpool fans found themselves branded by Kelvin MacKenzie as liars—for which he has now unreservedly apologised. Acting, he said, on information given to him by the police, his newspaper alleged that drunkenness was to blame. At the time, I questioned Ministers in Parliament about the fans’ behaviour, asking the then Minister at the Home Office, Douglas Hogg,

“at what level the publication of statements on 18 April by South Yorkshire police concerning the conduct of Liverpool fans at the Hillsborough semi-cup final was authorised; if he will publish a copy of that statement and the name of the officer who made it; and if he will make a statement”.

He replied:

“Statements made by officers of the South Yorkshire police are a matter for the chief constable. It would not be helpful for me to publish statements or counter-statements which have been made about the circumstances leading to the tragedy, or to name those who made them. It is for Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry to establish the facts”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/89; col. 404.]

The names of the officers who gave the authorisation were not subsequently made known and the falsehoods were allowed to stand. Taylor did not establish the facts; nor did he discover the truth. It was left to the grieving families to demand answers and to insist that justice should be done.

As the years went by I made repeated requests for the legal cases to be reopened. In the House of Commons in June 1992, the Solicitor-General at the time, Sir Derek Spencer, responded that he would,

“take a decision on an outstanding formal application for consent under section 13 of the Coroners Act 1988 as soon as possible”.

“As soon as possible” is a phrase which has been used again and again since 1989.

In 1992 I asked the Minister if he had any understanding of,

“the sense of grief felt by many people, including my constituent Philip Hammond whose boy was tragically killed at Hillsborough, and their sense that no line can be drawn on the issue until every legal remedy has been exhausted?”.

I urged him to,

“assure the House that that announcement will not be long in coming and that he will try to understand the feelings of the relatives involved, who do not feel that the inquest process has been exhaustive”.

Twenty years ago, the then Solicitor-General replied that he was,

“conscious of the continuing grief and anxiety of the many individuals affected by that tragedy. For that reason, the decision must be carefully considered—and it will be. We shall make a decision as soon as possible”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/92; col. 644-45.]

Three years had then elapsed since the tragedy—and a further 20 now. If we had acted in 1992, telling the coroner to reopen the cases, it would not now be possible to cite “the passage of time” as the reason why details of what occurred will not and cannot be accurately recalled. It is not just the passage of time that is shocking: it is our lamentable failure to provide justice— as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said in his remarks earlier—in a country which prides itself on the rule of law.

In 1998, in your Lordships’ House, I once again challenged the failure to re-examine the Hillsborough deaths and asked:

“What account the Home Secretary and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith”,

had taken,

“in deciding against a fresh inquiry into the Hillsborough tragedy, of missing video tapes, changed statements by police officers, conflicting medical evidence and complaints of lack of impartiality in the original coroner’s process and in the granting of immunity from prosecution to police officers upon taking early retirement”.

That was a point alluded to earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.

The then Minister, the late Lord Williams of Mostyn, replied:

“Lord Justice Stuart-Smith considered all the material evidence submitted to his scrutiny about the Hillsborough disaster. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary”—

Jack Straw—

“accepted his conclusion that there were no grounds for a fresh inquiry”.

The Minister told the House that,

“there was no new video evidence”,

and that,

“the only missing video tapes were two tapes stolen on the day of the disaster, which remain missing. They were not police tapes and the judge was satisfied that they would not have shown anything significant”.

He added that the Director of Public Prosecutions had considered whether police officers should be prosecuted,

“but concluded that no officer should face prosecution”,

and that because one officer had retired on ill health, it would,

“have been unfair to pursue what was, in essence, a joint charge against one officer only”.

Imagine if any of us here were involved in a bank robbery, a fraud, manslaughter or a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Would the police decide that because one of us had retired they would take no action against the other? That is simply implausible. It also raises a worrying question about the ability of the IPCC to question retired officers. Ministers, of course, have got it wrong before. In 1998, the Minister was clear that,

“allegations of irregularity and malpractice are not substantiated”,

and that it had been found that there were,

“no grounds to suggest that the original inquests were flawed or that complaints of bias against the Coroner were justified”.—[Official Report, 23/3/98; cols. WA 232-33.]

As the Prime Minister made clear in his Statement on 12 September, we now know otherwise and that allegations of irregularity and malpractice were indeed substantiated. Mr Cameron told Parliament that the Liverpool fans had “suffered a double injustice”, both in the,

“failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth”.

In offering a full apology, he also admonished those who had denigrated the deceased and suggested,

“that they were somehow at fault for their own deaths”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/9/12; cols. 285-86.]

In October, the IPCC published its Decision in Response to the Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, which makes it clear that despite the fact that it does,

“not have investigative powers over all of the parties referred to in the report”,

its desire is,

“to go forward in the spirit of the Panel’s work, to seek to ensure that there is a coordinated approach”—

a point which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to—

“that can encompass all the issues, agencies and individuals involved, and which liaises closely with the families”.

We can all welcome that.

It would, however, be helpful if, arising out of the exchange of letters on 10 December and 4 December between the right honourable Damian Green MP and the All-Party Group on the Hillsborough Disaster and the chair of the IPCC, Dame Anne Owers—concerning the decision not to specify effective sanctions in this Bill—the Minister will clarify precisely what action will be taken if serving officers refuse to attend an interview with the IPCC if required to do so. Will he also list the documents which the IPCC says were not given to the right reverend Prelate’s panel and say who is now looking at them, why they were not given to the panel in the first place and whether they are going to be made public?

Last week, the Home Affairs Select Committee said that there should be safeguards for police officers interviewed by the IPCC. This would surely point to the use of interviewing under caution. Perhaps the Minister will say whether that procedure will indeed be invoked. The Home Secretary, the right honourable Theresa May, gave a commitment in the House of Commons that the IPCC would be given the powers and resources it needs to carry out its investigation “thoroughly, transparently and exhaustively”. Perhaps the Minister will tell us more about resources and how that work is to be expedited.

When the Prime Minister made his Statement in September the Attorney-General, the right honourable Dominic Grieve MP, said he would make a decision in the forthcoming two months about whether to apply to the High Court for the original verdict of accidental death to be quashed. Yesterday the Attorney-General said:

“My application has now been lodged with the court. It is my intention to appear to argue the case at the hearing that will take place in the High Court. I believe that the case for the High Court to quash the original inquests is a good one”.

What is envisaged as the timetable for those new inquests? In particular, on 27 November I asked the Government,

“what consideration they have given to the petition by Anne Williams”—

supported by 100,000 people—to accelerate the new inquest into the death of her 15 year-old son Kevin at Hillsborough,

“and what consideration they have given to fast-tracking the request on compassionate grounds”.

The Advocate-General for Scotland, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, replied:

“The Attorney-General is in the process of preparing an application to the High Court to quash the original inquests and order new inquests into the deaths of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster. The evidence which supports an application in respect of Kevin Williams is essentially the same as that which supports an application into the other deaths and the Attorney-General expects to be in a position to lodge the application in December”.—[Official Report, 27/11/12; WA 38.]

Sadly, what is not the same as in other cases is that Anne Williams has terminal cancer. I hope that the Attorney-General, whom the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester—who is in his place and was himself present at the Hillsborough game—and I will see tomorrow, will ensure that Kevin’s new inquest will be given the highest priority so that it does not come too late for his grieving mother, Anne. Otherwise, one tragedy will be compounded by another. When he comes to reply, I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us the precise timetable which will be followed so that these new inquests will be held without delay, and whether the Lord Chief Justice is likely to make an announcement before Christmas.

Having taken 23 years to uncover the truth, the bereaved families and survivors have a right to expect that the investigations by the IPCC and the inquests are taken forward as expeditiously as possible. I am grateful to the Government for bringing forward the Bill, to the Prime Minister for acting so decisively and to the right reverend Prelate and his independent panel. This time, the words need to mean more than the ones previously uttered and, in seeking justice, our institutions need to examine how and why these tragic events were allowed to fester and to be covered up for so long.