Hillsborough Families Report: National Police Response

Rob Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I am afraid that I do not have visibility of the Home Secretary’s diary, so I cannot give a direct answer, but I can certainly ask the Home Secretary to write to the Chair of the Select Committee in response to that question. I add my thanks to hers to the bishop for the work he has done in both of the areas to which she referred. In the coming months, there will be very full engagement with all the interested parties, including Members of Parliament who represent the relevant communities, for the reasons that she mentioned.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I was at university in Sheffield at the time of the Hillsborough disaster. A friend of mine died in that tragedy; another was seriously injured. I pay tribute to the residents of Sheffield, who are very rarely mentioned but who showed compassion and gave real practical support on that day to people they did not know. They raced to the stadium, they offered free taxi journeys to help people to get where they needed to go, and they looked after people in their homes and provided them with hot meals. It was an incredibly moving thing to witness.

It has taken too long to learn the lessons of Hillsborough. Will my right hon. Friend confirm, irrespective of the timing of the publication of a Government response, that he will emphasise to all police forces around the country that if such an appalling tragedy ever happens again, their officers must behave openly and sympathetically, even if it means showing their own shortcomings?

[Chris Philp]

Yes, I can do that. I thank my hon. Friend for his question, particularly in the light of how he has been personally affected by the tragedy. I can give him that assurance. Some steps have already been taken, partly through the changes made in 2020 to the statutory professional standards for policing. That will be further reinforced by the updated code of ethics, which will be published by the College of Policing, following its announcement yesterday, with the exact purpose that my hon. Friend has just set out in mind.