Hillsborough Disaster

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I have been a Member of Parliament since 1979 and I do not think I have witnessed another debate of the quality of tonight’s. That says something to the families that were partially destroyed by the events we are recalling, and to the wider community that has kept a constant interest in the issue.

This event has affected my constituency, the town of Birkenhead, more than any other single event that I can recall, so the thanks that Members have registered tonight to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) come not only from the families—obviously from the families—but from practically the whole of the Birkenhead constituency which, as I said, has been affected by these events and continues to be affected as by no other events that I can recall.

Back in 1963 I was sitting with my grandmother as she died. She was grieving the loss of two of her children 70 years previously. She was of course looking back to a time when it was more common for children to die, and yet she said that she could not bear people trying to cheer her up by saying that she would get over it. She did not want to get over it. It seemed that getting over it would be a denial of the existence and celebration of her children’s lives. However, she did know what had happened to her children and so was able quickly to put closure on their deaths.

The families I represent in Birkenhead, and those represented by other Members who have spoken today, have been denied that closure by two indescribable acts of horror that have been inflicted upon them. The first act was the press campaign. To have to cope with members of one’s family going off to a football match and coming back from the undertakers is an event that most of us—thank God—will never have to deal with. Trying to grapple with the immensity of what has happened to one’s family while constantly having to read attacks in the press almost on them, and certainly on their mates and more widely on their mates in the football club, is an unspeakable horror.

Although the House has at long last come to a mind on what we and the Government should be doing, we do not have the power to compel one of the other big players in the event similarly to make a public apology for what has happened. I hope that one of the messages we send out tonight will be a clear one to News International that it too has a part to play if we are to draw a line in the sand for those families. That seems to me to be the first indescribable horror that was inflicted upon those families.

The second horror has been referred to by other Members. It is 22 years since the events, but only now are we in the position, I hope, to bring closure through complete revelation about what actually happened, if that is what the panel decides. I have attended only one other debate in which those on the Front Benches have stayed for the duration, and that was the Falklands debate. Those who are unfamiliar with our procedures might not understand the significance of that, but it is remarkable not only that the Home Secretary is here but that the Culture Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), to whom people have rightly given credit, and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), are also present. I thank my right hon. and hon. Friends for the role they have played in reaching the stage we are at tonight.

I thank the Home Secretary, as many have done, for the diligence she has shown and is showing tonight. My plea to her is that she will keep up that diligence to ensure that all the evidence is made available and that no piece of paper is withheld from the inquiry panel so that no one can whip up any debates in future and claim that we do not know what actually took place. That must include the papers and briefing that were given to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister, before she made the trip to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) referred.

None of us can undo those events. None of us can undo the injustice that the families in Birkenhead, in Merseyside and beyond have suffered, but News International can help to draw a line under these events and we, in support of the Home Secretary, can ensure that this is the last inquiry, the last panel and the last effort to put into the public domain all the information so that the families can, like my grandmother, know what happened and can, even if it is 22 years late, begin to grow the scar tissue that will allow them better to face the world, while obviously never forgetting what they have lost.