Hillsborough

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am very happy to join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute not only to the families and the way in which they kept the flame of hope for truth and justice alive over 27 years, but to the city and people of Liverpool, who have shown solidarity and will continue to do so over the coming days. As the hon. Gentleman has said, regardless of their footballing affiliations they recognised the injustice that had been done. They came together, they supported the families, and truth has now been found.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

What we can learn from the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) who raised the question of the Stephen Lawrence investigation is that people can come to Members of Parliament—either as families or as members of the professional services, including the ambulance service and the police—and if there is some kind of cover-up going on, we can hope that the leaders of any professions involved, including the police and the NHS, will pay attention when an MP comes along with them to say that action needs to be taken.

There was a series of three mistakes at Hillsborough. The first was allowing the game to take place in a stadium when people knew it was not right. The second was the actions that happened then, which may have been mistakes, and worst of all was the cover-up. How can more than 230 statements by the police be changed, presumably in the police service, without people being able to say to Members of Parliament, “This is wrong: there is a cover-up and it needs turning over and investigating”? Such things need to be brought out into what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health calls intelligent transparency. I think that that is the lesson from now on.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Of course, as a Member of this House he has taken forward causes that others have stood against and tried to resist, and he has been successful in that work. He is absolutely right. What came out of the independent panel report was astonishing. People were truly shocked by the fact that they had heard that statements had been altered in order to show a different picture from what had actually happened. That is appalling and it should never happen again.

Policing and Crime Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Yes. It is important that all cases are dealt with in as timely a fashion as possible. Beefing up the ability of local complaints procedures to deal with what we might see as simpler local complaints may very well enable people to get a better response from that local complaints process, rather than feeling that things then have to be put through to the IPCC, which will have a focus on serious and sensitive cases. Also, the restructuring will help to smooth the process by which cases are looked at by what will be the OPC.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

This Second Reading debate is not the time to go into the details of the case of former sergeant Gurpal Virdi, but will the Home Secretary ask her advisers to talk to the IPCC about why it is saying that his complaint should be referred back to the Met’s department of professional standards, given that the complaint was about its behaviour in the first place, in the incomprehensible prosecution that he had to endure last year?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises a case that, as I know from our discussions and correspondence, he has taken very seriously and acted on for some time now. I recognise the issue that he has raised. There are questions around this case that relate not just to the IPCC and the police but to the Crown Prosecution Service, and I know that he has taken those up. I will reflect on the point that he made.

In part 3, for the first time, we will create a list of core police powers that may be exercised only by warranted officers, such as powers of arrest and stop and search. Police powers that do not form part of this reserved list can be conferred by a chief officer on a member of police staff or a volunteer, provided that they are suitable and capable of carrying out the relevant role and have received the appropriate training. This will ensure that chief officers have the flexibility and freedoms to make best use of the skills, experience and training of their workforce, whether they are warranted officers, police staff or volunteers.

As Members of this House are aware, volunteers have much to offer policing. Over 16,000 special constables regularly give up their time to help keep our communities safe. However, forces are missing out on opportunities to use those with specialist skills, for example in IT or forensic accountancy, who would be prepared to volunteer their time but do not want to become a special constable. It makes no sense that a chief officer can vest all the powers of a constable in a volunteer, but lacks the ability to confer on a volunteer a narrower set of powers relevant to a particular role. The existing law also puts unnecessary constraints on a chief officer who wishes to maximise the operational effectiveness of police staff. The Bill removes these barriers while strengthening the role of warranted officers. It confers on chief officers the ability to designate police staff and volunteers with those policing powers appropriate to their role.

I am committed to ensuring that the police have the powers they need to protect the public and to prevent, detect and investigate criminal offences, but we should continue to keep the coercive powers of the state under regular review to ensure that the rights of the individual are properly balanced against the need to keep our communities safe.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Gérard Biard, the editor- in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine which has been attacked, has said:

“A newspaper is not a weapon of war.”

The fact that it has been attacked is an example of how some people object to what others say and do. When I stopped being a Minister in Northern Ireland, I became associated with New Consensus and then New Dialogue, which after each IRA outrage would say, “This is not being done in our name.” That was a way of not going back to the 1970s. When there were terrorist bombs and outrages, people would start to hate the Irish, but by the 1990s most of the Irish were saying, “This is not being done in our name.” We probably need to find a way of letting people—not moderate Muslims but those who are just not violent—express the same thing. We have to say to the French, as others have, “We are with you.” The word “solidarité” is one we can take into English; we can stand in solidarity and suffer in solidarity, just as many people did with us on 7 July 2005.

I did not want to add to the debate on Third Reading, because I have not taken part in the Bill’s earlier stages, but I wish to say that we need to be careful about taking action that drives more people into believing that extremism works. We have to support those who have the responsibility for gathering information and trying to take action. It is worth putting on the record that the anti-terrorism hotline, which can be found by any internet search, is 0800 789 321. People may say to themselves, “I don’t know if this matters”, but when specialists get the information, or talk to someone, they can take things in and make the judgment. If anyone finds something suspicious or odd, it is far better to ring that number and provide the information to the authorities.

Child Abuse

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am happy to take away the point that the hon. Gentleman raises. It is precisely because I want to ensure that we cover all the cases that have come up that I think it is important that the terms of the inquiry panel are drawn quite widely. I will look into the matter that he raises.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The country will welcome the principles behind my right hon. Friend’s reviews and panel. Will she, along with other Departments, make it clear to all children, especially looked-after children, that if they have worries that they cannot communicate to the people who are looking after them, there is an outside place to which they can go with confidence to talk about their worries?

On archives, may I refer my right hon. Friend to the letter that she has received from Dr Richard Stone—I do not expect her to respond to it this afternoon—about the hidden stories of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry? As a member of the inquiry, he did not have access to the papers while trying to implement the recommendations. It seems to me to be important that we learn the lessons from that.

[Mrs May]

I will obviously look carefully at the letter to which my hon. Friend refers and at examples from other inquiries that have taken place.

It is important that young people who are victims of sexual abuse feel able to go somewhere to report it. As has been said by more than one Member today, I hope the fact that we are talking about this matter and our acknowledgement of what has happened to young people in the past and the importance of dealing with it will give victims greater confidence that if they come forward, they will be listened to and heard.

We have seen recent cases that have been taken forward by police forces. Sadly, I see the list of the operations that the police are taking forward to deal with child sexual exploitation and grooming up and down the country. Frankly, the number of cases is shocking. Again, as young people see those cases being dealt with, hopefully it will give them the confidence to come forward if they have been victims of abuse.

Ellison Review

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Lady’s comments on the significance of the review. Of course, as she said, it is not alone in identifying problems with how cases have been treated; the Daniel Morgan case and the results of the Hillsborough Independent Panel also revealed failings that had taken place. As she said, it is absolutely imperative, in order to ensure that there is trust and confidence in the police, which is vital for us all, that we deal with these failings appropriately and get to the truth.

As the right hon. Lady and I have said, the results of the Ellison review are truly shocking. I suspect that it will take hon. Members some time to examine all the aspects that Mark Ellison has brought out, but the extent to which the report shows that a deep failure occurred at the time of the incidents and behaviours he examined is obvious from the remarks I have made today. It is therefore necessary that we follow that up by a number of different routes.

With regard to the timetable for the further investigation I have referred to the director-general of the National Crime Agency, I will of course be happy to keep the House informed of the results and how it will be taken forward. I would expect the director-general to look at the various issues the right hon. Lady referred to when considering how the investigation should take place and what is necessary to ensure that prosecutions, if they are required, can take place.

I do not think that it will be possible for us to discuss the form of the public inquiry properly until we have seen more of the next stage of Mark Ellison’s work, which is considering the wider issue and the question of miscarriages of justice. However, I will of course want to ensure that the public inquiry has the right terms of reference and that it is able to conduct the job that we want it to do and that the Lawrence family will obviously be concerned that it does. At the right time, I think that it will be appropriate to have discussions about the form of the public inquiry and its terms of reference.

On the IPCC, as the right hon. Lady said and as I said, Mark Ellison finds that its inquiries and work were not adequate and that it did not find the corruption that is alleged to have taken place. I have already given the IPCC more resources, more power and more of a task. The right hon. Lady referred to transferring resources from professional standards departments. That is a reflection of the fact that we are transferring work to the IPCC. One concern that people have always had is about the police themselves investigating serious complaints against them. That is why we are transferring that responsibility to the IPCC and the resources to undertake it.

On the safeguards on undercover policing, we have recently made changes to enhance them so that although longer-term deployments—anything over 12 months—must be authorised by a chief constable, undercover deployments can be authorised by an assistant chief constable. The independent Office of Surveillance Commissioners must be notified of all deployments, so the oversight framework is already stronger.

The right hon. Lady rightly raised the concern of Hillsborough families that they may have been subject to inappropriate surveillance. I understand that a formal complaint has been made to the IPCC about that, and that it is considering how best to investigate the concerns that have been raised.

There is much still to be done. Change has taken place over the years but sadly, what we have seen today is that it is necessary to continue the inquiries and investigations to ensure that, for the sake of the family particularly and for all of us and our trust in the police, we get to the truth.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

May I pay public tribute to the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and John Walker for going to see the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), which led to the inquiry being set up, and to those who organised the meeting between the family and Nelson Mandela, which gave a profile and quiet dignity to reflect properly the way the family had reacted? I pay tribute to the family and those with them, including Baroness Howells, who managed to avoid any disturbance, and I add the name of John Philpott, the local Plumstead commander who, within 24 hours of the murderous attack on Stephen Lawrence and Duwayne Brooks, organised a community meeting at the town hall and said publicly that people knew that Stephen Lawrence was a good person, not a bad person. When the further inquiries take place, will my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary ask that consideration be given to using Clive Driscoll, the police officer who helped to have one person convicted, as an adviser, if not a member, so that what the police have known for years can be added in?

In both this case and another six years later in Brighton, when constituents of mine, Michael and Jay Abatan were attacked, the first failing was that the police did not arrest the people who were thought to be suspects and hold them separately, or have proper surveillance and gather the evidence that was available at the time. We are now sweeping up mistakes that were made later. I pay tribute to all the police who do their job properly and find the evidence straightaway so that justice can be pursued in court.

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is absolutely right that we should never forget that there are police officers out there who do their job perfectly properly with honesty and integrity, and are bringing criminals to justice as a result of their work. We should not forget to pay tribute—he is right to do so—to those who have campaigned for many years alongside the family and in the House to ensure that those who were responsible are brought to justice and that we can get at the truth.

When the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) set up the Macpherson inquiry and when its results were received, everyone assumed that it had been able to look at all the evidence and to get to the truth. Sadly, as we now know, that was not the case, and certain matters that should have been referred to it were not.

My hon. Friend refers to a particular officer and the need to ensure that in further investigations police experience and knowledge of the case is not lost. That matter has been drawn to my attention, and I am giving proper consideration to it.

Hillsborough

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman’s comments about the families are well made. This is a very difficult time and, as he says, it is only now that some families are in any sense able to fill in the picture of what happened to their loved ones. I am concerned by his reference to South Yorkshire police and would be grateful if he and I could have a further discussion about that matter. I am certainly prepared to look into it.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I join the tributes to the Opposition MPs who have led the persistent campaigns for the families. Sadly, in the 1980s I was involved in two sets of crushings. The first was at an archbishop’s funeral, when 14 people died around me. The other was at the Heysel stadium, where, within 200 feet of me, 39 people died. As well as finding out what went wrong at Hillsborough and after Hillsborough, which I hope the inquest will achieve, we ought to pay tribute to the Police Federation for being the first to call for the safety of grounds from the 1930s through to the 1970s. May I say to my right hon. Friend that perimeter safety and crowd safety could be another tribute to those who sadly lost their lives?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We should all be constantly aware of the need to ensure safety at stadiums when large numbers of people are at football matches and other events. It is extremely important that we learn the lessons from the tragedies from the past to ensure the safety of those who attend such events in the future.

Home Affairs

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The rate of certain aspects of prosecutions taking place in relation to certain individuals has actually been higher under this Government than it was under the last Labour Government. That is one of the areas—[Interruption.] I have to say that I am not sure—

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. An hon. Member has just called across the House, saying, “Stop making that stupid face.” Is that parliamentary language?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I did not hear the expression concerned, but I think that it falls into the category of behaviour that is discourteous but not disorderly. We will leave it there for the time being, but I appeal to Members on both sides of the House to remember what I said yesterday. Speaking on behalf of the House and of the public, I believe that we should try to express ourselves with restraint, moderation and good humour, in the best traditions required by “Erskine May”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a good point: many people are incredibly frustrated by cases in which judges decide that the right to family life means that someone should not be deported, despite evidence of a significant level of criminality. Last July, when we made changes to the immigration rules, I hoped and expected that judges would respond to those changes, given that there was cross-party support for them. As I said, there was no opposition to them in the House. The fundamental difference this time around is that the changes will be made through primary legislation rather than through the immigration rules.

I now move on to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill. The Bill aims to diminish the extent to which honest and hard-working people are preyed on by criminals and by bullies who show no regard for the basic rules of civilised living. It will do so in three ways. First, it will make it easier for citizens to get the police or local authorities to take action against people whose antisocial behaviour disrupts their lives. Secondly, it includes measures to ensure that we can tackle organised crime more effectively. In particular, we are substantially increasing the maximum penalty for the illegal importation of guns, and creating a new offence of

“possession for sale or transfer”

of illegal firearms. Thirdly, it continues the process of reform of the police, so that police officers have clear professional standards and are able to spend more of their time fighting crime than filling in forms.

The Bill also contains a provision to make forcing a person to marry a criminal offence. Forced marriage is a serious problem in some communities in Britain today. It is an abomination: it is totally incompatible with the values of a free society that anyone should be forced into a marriage. Astonishingly, however, forcing a person into marriage is not a crime under our law. This Bill will remedy that situation, and in doing so, it will signal very clearly that this country does not tolerate the forcing of one person by another into marriage. The Bill will also make easier the prosecution of people who attempt it. Prosecutors will no longer have to identify other offences such as assault or kidnapping before they can start proceedings against someone for forcing another into marriage.

Antisocial behaviour is destructive, demoralising and damaging. When it is repeated over and over again on the same victims, its results can be tragic, as numerous cases involving some of the most vulnerable and easily hurt people in our society have shown. The existing means for dealing with antisocial behaviour are neither quick nor effective. The Bill will give new powers to the police, councils and landlords that will ensure that quick and effective remedies are available. It will also give people the power to require agencies to deal with antisocial behaviour. It will no longer be possible for a police force or a council to ignore repeated complaints, as it is now.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I invite my right hon. Friend to join me in congratulating the police on making savings and on working far more effectively in reducing crime. On the issue of antisocial behaviour, will she review whether unauthorised campers and Travellers returning to the same place, doing damage and causing costs can be dealt with more effectively? This sort of antisocial behaviour is not acceptable and it is resented by local residents.

[Mrs May]

I recognise the problem that my hon. Friend identifies as one that affects many communities up and down the country. I am pleased to say that in numerous places we have already seen the police taking a more robust approach in dealing with these particular issues. I encourage the police to do that when they are faced with these problems which, as my hon. Friend says, cause considerable concern to local residents.

This Bill aims to give people much greater control over the services that are meant to help them, but which have often in the past been operated for the convenience of those delivering them. The Bill will change that situation.

The Bill tackles another aspect of antisocial behaviour: irresponsible dog ownership. It will extend the offence of being in charge of a dog that is dangerously out of control to apply to any location.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I enjoyed the start of this debate and I recognise that I have not been here for all of the speeches in between, so I am grateful for the chance to say a few words.

I want to follow on from the speech by the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and the speech made yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who talked about the importance of public health.

Back in 1986, I was made Minister with responsibility for roads—painting white lines on national roads—and someone asked me what I was going to do to improve road safety. I asked how one measured the change in the level of road safety. Within 20 minutes, we were discussing casualty reduction. Casualties can be counted, however inaccurately. I asked what was the dominant factor, and was told that young men drinking more than the legal limit of alcohol and then going driving mattered a lot. I received consistent advice from virtually every respected group in the country that three things had to happen: the legal limit had to be lowered, which would criminalise more people; policing had to be stepped up; and penalties had to be increased.

In those days, there were approximately 2 million occasions a week when young men would drive a car having consumed more than the legal limit for alcohol. They were not necessarily over the limit when they drove. The number of drink-related deaths when the driver or motorcycle rider was above the legal limit when killed, or the passenger was killed, was 1,200 a year.

The figure now is between 200 and 250. Four-fifths of a socially acceptable, illegal, body-bending habit evaporated with no change of law, no change of sentencing and no change to enforcement.

Considering the difficulties that younger people face, whether they are our own children or somebody else’s, does matter. If we had an 18-year-old who said, “Do you know that interest rates have been at 0.5% for a long time, the rate of unemployment has fluctuated between this, that and the other, and the rate of inflation on different measures is between this and that?” we might say in response, “I hope you are doing A-level economics.”

If that 18-year-old said, “I am in court on Monday on a serious criminal charge,” or “My husband”—or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, or a stranger—“and I have become pregnant; what should we do now?” or “I have decided to become a lifelong smoker of 20 a day, seven packs a week, at more than £7 a pack in after-tax income, so you, the parent, are more likely to bury me than me bury you,” each of us might regard the second set of announcements as more significant and more important to us than interest rates, the rate of unemployment and the rate of inflation.

I estimate that the figures for those taking up crime for the first time to be about 1,800 a week. Those figures can be obtained by asking how many people get convicted each week for the first time, having committed an offence for which the sentence could be six months or more.

When I first raised the matter, the Home Office claimed it did not have the information, but it did—although it is probably now with the Ministry of Justice. As part of our national statistics, those figures should be coming out regularly, both nationally and regionally, so that the media might start paying attention to how it is that so many of our young people—a third of males by the age of 30—have been convicted of a serious criminal offence. That is why I told the Home Secretary earlier that we need to pay attention to the numbers who commit offences for the first time and for how long, on average, they go on doing so. There are relatively few lifelong serious criminals.

In her speech yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said that 200,000 teenagers took up smoking every year. If 40% of our young people are taking up smoking—almost the same level as 25 years ago—all the measures taken since then, such as removing promotions from the front of tobacconists and raising prices significantly, must have been inadequate.

Why and when do people take up smoking? Very few take it up after the age of 21. It is something that teenagers take up. Ask a young person who is smoking, “How old are you?”, and they might say, “I’m 15”, “I’m 13” or “I’m 18”. If we say, “You’re too young to smoke,” effectively we are saying, “You’re doing an adult thing.” We ought to say, “Oh dear, a child. Only children take it up. I’m sorry you’re one of them,” and walk away.

We might also say to that child, “If you are a smoker, try not to be the first person to light up in any group and try not to smoke in front of someone who is younger than you.” Whatever the merits or demerits of plain packaging—it is not an argument I want to get into—what is certain is that smoking is a social disease: people pick it up because those around them are doing it. We need to change that culture. In effect, we need to make smoking like picking your nose: it goes on, but it should be in private, not public, and people should just disapprove. Before we changed the law, people did not smoke in a church, chapel, temple, mosque or synagogue. It just was not done. It was not expected.

We must do for smoking what we did for drink-driving. What was effective for drink-driving was, first, telling hosts, whether in a pub, club, party or at home, “Always have alcohol-free drinks within reach. No one should ever have to ask for an alcohol-free drink.” That is not just for drivers, but for those who are temperate, who make up 10% of the population, for those who were alcoholics, who also make up 10% of the population, for those who are pregnant, those who want to be pregnant, those who have drunk too much and those who are on a diet—there are all kinds of reasons.

Secondly, we want to ensure that passengers pick an alcohol-free driver. If I were going on a holiday to the Costa Lot from Gatwick and saw the pilot coming out of a bar and tottering slightly as he walked up the front steps of the aeroplane, I might think, “This plane is not for me”—planes can fly themselves, but cars cannot. In my time, five young men would get into a car and drive to the pub. Each would buy a round of drinks and four passengers would get back into the car knowing that the driver had had five drinks and that they had paid for four of them.

Thirdly, if like me someone drinks and drives, they should decide in advance which it is going to be that night. If in years to come, I get held for drink-driving, people will point to this speech and say, “Ya-ha-ha, hypocrite!”, but the fact is that between host responsibility, passenger choice and the drinking-driving choice, things become much better. That has become the norm and young people, instead of being four times as bad as their parents, are probably four times as good.

I want to turn to sex. Between 40% and 45% of people in this country get involved in a conception that ends in a termination—a formal abortion. We have nearly 400,000 abortions a year in this country, which is 40,000 a year more than we had 25 years ago, despite all the sex and personal education, the availability of contraception, the advice and politicians saying, “Say no.”

The only thing we cannot inherit from our parents is celibacy, unless we are conceived in a glass dish. We say to people, “Think about family planning or birth control.” After a good party, we might think about having it off. If we do, do we wait for the embarrassment afterwards of saying, “Cripes, we’ve conceived, we’ve already got five children” or “What did you say your name was?”, or “I know we’ve lived together for two years, but we hadn’t planned this.” We need to give people the confidence to use more than the words “family planning” and “birth control”. It is a choice between what embarrassment people want: between talking beforehand about contraception or afterwards talking about the consequence of having conceived.

We can drop down to the Dutch figures, which are one quarter of ours, in about six months, if we start using language that is helpful to people, as we did with drink-driving. So often in Parliament, we use language that does not relate to people in their homes, in their lives or on the streets. It worked with drink-driving.

Too often in politics we believe that the law is the answer to questions. The law can make something into a crime, but it does not necessarily stop it happening—we would not have 80,000 people in jail tonight if it did. The law can give people rights, but they cannot always use them. The law can also provide a system of dispute resolution, which can often be useful, but not always.

There are some good things in the Queen’s Speech about fairness, but if we rely too much on the law to make the changes that affect our social health, we will be relying on the wrong weapons or crutches. Openness and language matter enormously.

The last thing I want to talk about is fairness. One of the issues that came up at the end of the last Session was leasehold reform. I believe we have to go much further. There are 3 million leaseholders in this country. There was a time, 40 or 50 years ago, when George Thomas—later Lord Tonypandy, but in between the occupant of the Speaker’s Chair—was campaigning for leasehold reform because so many people living in the terraces in the Welsh valleys were being exploited by the leasehold system.

Leasehold enfranchisement came. Now we have leasehold valuation tribunals, which are supposed to be a cheap, simple and effective way of resolving disputes between leaseholders and freeholders and their managing agents. There is an organisation called Lease that provides advice. It gets just over £1 million a year from the Government, but it needs much more help. I am seeing Lease tomorrow and I hope to work with it to tell Government what they need to do.

There are two or three Departments involved: the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice and one other—I forget which one. They need to put together a taskforce to analyse why some cases do not get to a leasehold valuation tribunal fast, why they cost far more to resolve than the £500 advertised as the fee and why clever lawyers manage to put down the leaseholders and let some freeholders—not all, but some—abuse the system. I will give the House one example of abuse. The freeholder, through their managing agent, can arrange insurance and make the leaseholders pay the premium without saying openly what the commission is and without necessarily testing the market. That is just one example; I could give a number of others.

When we look at fairness, which is mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, let us hope that we can build it in and use this place to bring some of the issues into the open, so that they can be resolved properly by those who are doing things anyway, who can find ways of doing them better. Doing things better is what matters most. It certainly worked when I had responsibility for reducing casualties on the road; it can work in other fields as well.

Stephen Lawrence

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions and underline the seriousness we attach to the current allegations. The Home Secretary is looking very closely at this matter, but wishes the Metropolitan police’s internal review into the current allegations to conclude to inform her determination of what next steps are appropriate. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that those investigations should be carried out by the Metropolitan police swiftly in order to inform further consideration of whether a public inquiry is or is not appropriate.

I would like to reassure the hon. Gentleman that this matter will be looked at speedily and closely by the Home Secretary, who will continue to have discussions with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. It is essential to have trust and confidence in the policing provided within London and in the rest of the country. I say to the hon. Gentleman that the Home Office has not sought in any way to brief this out, and that any decisions made by the Home Secretary should be reported to this House first. I can assure him that this matter will be dealt with entirely appropriately to provide the necessary reassurance on this significant matter—to him, to his constituents and to the Lawrence family.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I hope that my hon. Friend will, in time, be able to give fuller replies to the questions put by the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), to whom I pay tribute, along with John Austin, for calling for the original inquiry.

I suggest that the Home Secretary or my hon. Friend consult the original commission—including John Sentamu, now Archbishop of York, and Dr Richard Stone—and acknowledge that, although we recognise that possible criminal proceedings may follow in this case, it was possible for criminal convictions to take place after the original Macpherson inquiry.

We all know that most police want to nick criminals and bring them to justice, and that most police officers are not racist by institutional or any other means, but those who are need to discover that the time has gone when the colour of someone’s skin should be viewed as more important than the colour of their eyes or their hair.

[James Brokenshire]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s last comment: racism has no part and no place in the policing of our country. I pay tribute to the important steps that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has taken in underlining that message and to some of the actions that he is already taking to ensure that that message on policing in London is sent out loud and clear, including the introduction of CCTV cameras into some vehicles to provide greater transparency and accountability. These are issues that the Home Secretary is taking into careful consideration. As I said, she wishes the response of the current corruption investigations conducted by the Metropolitan police to be reported to her; she will then be able to determine the appropriate next steps in that regard.

Hillsborough Disaster

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Anderson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, because he raises exactly the point I am trying to make. Sadly, it was the Liverpool fans who suffered that day but it could have been any of us, because the authorities took an attitude that said, “These people are out of control. We will treat them like animals.” How did they do that? It was okay to herd people into a clearly overcrowded area. It was okay to keep forcing more and more people into confined spaces, despite their objections. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck mentioned what happened to him and I experienced a similar event at the Leppings Lane end in Sheffield in 1968. We could not even get near the turnstiles, but the design of the ground funnelled people into an area. So we were pushed up against police horses and they could not move, let alone the crowd. What stays in my mind from that day was a policeman on horseback flailing with his baton, but he could not move—none of us could move. That took place 21 years before Hillsborough, so a catalogue of events led up to what happened on that day in 1989.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Sadly, I was at the Heysel stadium. Very few people misbehaved and the resulting problem occurred mainly because most of the Liverpool fans had been crushed together; there were far too many in a small pen. It is a tragedy that the lessons were not learned.

[Mr Anderson]

Again, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This was about how we treated football fans, which was different from how any other sports fans were treated in this country or across Europe. That was shown by the fact that when people were trying to escape from these cages, they were penned in—they were actually forced back. They were knocked back by the police, because the police thought that they were trying to invade the pitch for some reason other than to try to save their lives. That would not have happened in any other scenario.

As we have heard so often today, although all of that was a real scandal, just as bad, after the devastation to so many lives, is the way in which this issue has been covered up for two decades and more. It was covered up by the authorities and it was disgracefully covered up by some of the media in this country. The behaviour of The Sun has been highlighted today. As a former coal miner, I am not surprised that The Sun turns against working people—it has done that for decades and I do not see how it will ever stop doing it. But that does not stop us, and others in this House and this country, from saying that that was out of order, particularly as there was an attempt to sway the conscience and belief of people in this country against ordinary people who were just having a day out supporting their football team.

As far back as 1999, I was working in Liverpool with some social workers, and in the days leading up to the 10th anniversary they were saying to me, “We’ve got to get justice for these people.” I was working with the trade union movement and we tried to move that forward. We had discussions with the then Government but, sadly, despite all our best efforts, nothing happened. We have heard about how the courageous attempts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) started to bring some pressure to bear and we did then see movement from the Government some 10 years later.

We are still discussing this issue here today, 22 years down the line, and we hope that we are going to see justice done. We need everything out in the open and we need it now. We do not need some more vague promises of, “Somewhere down the line.” We need to act when the information comes out. It is no good just saying, “This was wrong. That was wrong.” We need to bring people to justice in this country. If it was wrong for them to have done this in 1989, it is right for them to face punishment in 2011, or whenever we can bring them to book. We need to make sure that we do so because we owe it to the 96. We owe it to the families who lost loved ones and we owe it to all the folks who will go to football games this weekend, because it is about them as well as about the people who went before them.

As has been rightly said, this is about every football fan in this country, because the truth is that football is still the beautiful game. It is a hugely emotive event, a game that does away with any sense of rationality. A person can believe that their team is the best team in the world when, quite frankly, it is not and probably never will be—[Hon. Members: “Speak for yourself.”] Look, I have to get votes in Newcastle. Football is a game that sometimes brings out the best and the worst in all of us who are obsessed by it. The feeling is never less than great and I hope that it never loses that feeling, that passion and that bond between people from all walks of life.

Football brings people together and one of the great experiences of my life is when Liverpool fans come to Sunderland and then come to the village in which I have spent most of my adult life to go to the memorial for Bob Paisley, the most successful Liverpool manager of all time, who was born and bred in the village that I am proud to come from. Bob Paisley’s brother worked with my dad. There is a bond between people who can say that for the next 90 minutes they will shout at each other, saying that they hate one another—that they hate the very life of one another—but can come out and be the best of friends. There is nothing wrong with that and we should be proud of the culture that this country brought to the sporting world 150 years ago. That is something about which we should all be passionate and proud.

That is the real joy of football. It is miles away from the world of Sky, from the superstars who cannot even be bothered to come on to the pitch when some of us would give our left arm to play once for our team and from the agents who will destroy football if they can get away with it. We owe it to the 96 to ensure that justice is done today. We need to see justice. Failure to do so diminishes our game and our nation and it will diminish this House. We need to get on with it.