Hillsborough Disaster

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have already heard, in the eloquent speeches made by many hon. Friends, moving tributes to the families of the 96 victims. I want to recognise the tireless work that so many have done to get us to where we are today. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) for the work that he did as Culture Secretary to secure the release of documents and to establish the independent panel; to my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for her role in calling for the release of the documents; and to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who, since being elected to this House, as he did before, has relentlessly pressed and campaigned for the publication of all documents. To the 140,000 people who signed the petition, I say thank you for ensuring that we are having this debate today—but it should not have taken so long.

None of us needs reminding of the events of that dark, dark day 22 years ago. Those dreadful scenes from Hillsborough will never be forgotten in Liverpool; they cast a permanent scar across the city and on Merseyside. What happened on that fateful afternoon was a tragedy not just for the people of Liverpool but for our whole country.

Growing up in Wembley, north-west London, I commemorated the disaster every year. Two of the 96 people who lost their lives were Sarah and Victoria Hicks, sisters aged just 15 and 19, Sarah studying chemistry at Liverpool university, Victoria still at school—the same school I went to. I and many others spent hours on a bench dedicated to their memory in the rose garden at our school. I met Jenny Hicks, Sarah and Victoria’s mother, at the 21st anniversary memorial service at Anfield. She is so brave. Jenny Hicks, her family, and all the families are so brave, and they have suffered enough. Their dignified and unwavering campaign for justice is an inspiration to us all.

I want to read a few words from a moving letter sent to me by one of my constituents:

“Everyone in the House of Commons has known private grief and experienced the same patterns of raw emotion. It is incumbent on all of you to recover from your memories those feelings which possessed you at the time of your grief and loss, and project yourselves into the unimaginable torment of living, in that condition, not for twenty-two days, or twenty-two weeks, or twenty-two months, but for twenty-two-years; in an unrelieved cloud of unknowing, tormented by the sure and certain knowledge that the facts, which alone, can end their private agony, have been sealed up against them, locked away by an indifferent and heedless power, that refuses to discuss the motives and purposes which drives its actions.

For twenty-two years, the immediate and extended families of the ninety-six victims of the Hillsborough disaster have endured the unendurable. With no comfort but their inmost resources and the solidarity of their friends, who, as the petition has shown, are no longer counted in handfuls but in Legions.”

For too long, these families have suffered without the truth. The actions taken by a few during and after that day have made their burdens even more difficult to bear. From the attempts at a cover-up to the desire to depict fans as the authors of their own disaster, so many scandals have been perpetrated against them. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh wrote, an orchestrated campaign was conducted to place the blame for what happened on the victims rather than the authorities. Senior police officers lied about why the gates at the Leppings Lane terrace were opened, blaming Liverpool fans for forcing through them when in fact it was the authorities who had opened them. Ambulances which could have saved lives were refused entry into the ground. Police officers were ordered to change their accounts of what had occurred to cover up mistakes. A national newspaper printed lies about fans who were trying to save lives, disgracefully accusing them of stealing from victims and attacking police. Despite the Taylor inquiry finding that the police were at fault, not a single officer responsible for the conduct of the police that day has been disciplined. It simply is not right.

Twenty-two years later, it is hard to believe that so many questions remain unanswered. That is why it is imperative that all documentation is released, first to the independent panel and the families, and then what is appropriate to the public. I am grateful that the Home Secretary has clarified that the Government will not hold back any documents, because the independent panel and the families need everything—including all the Cabinet minutes, documents and papers relating to the Hillsborough disaster, right through to the present day. There is much speculation about what may have been said, done or written, including in correspondence between Douglas Hurd and Margaret Thatcher. The families will continue to be haunted by the speculation until everything is released. I echo the request of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh that the release of all information from private companies, specifically from News International, be included.

Today, all of us in this place owe it to every family who are suffering to put right what was done wrong and to ensure that the unredacted truth is unequivocally released, so that we can finally see what has taken far too long: justice for the 96.