Hillsborough

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I do not know why they were not made available, but the IPCC has them now, and will be looking at all of them as part of its investigation. Obviously, it will have had contact with the police officers who provided them.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement, and for her work on this most sensitive and troubling of issues. I also pay tribute to the Hillsborough families for their steadfast campaigning. They are about to enter a very difficult phase in the process.

I make no apology for returning to the issue—the shocking issue—of the disclosure of 2,500 police notebooks. May I ask two questions? First, the IPCC now has those notebooks, but will those involved in Operation Resolve have copies of them? Secondly, will my right hon. Friend ensure that there is a thorough review of the storage of police notebooks, given that the issue has implications for all historical investigations, criminal and civil?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for reiterating the point of concern about the police pocket notebooks. Although the two investigations are concerned with slightly different aspects of the Hillsborough tragedy, it has been made clear that information that is relevant to both should be available to both.

As for my hon. Friend’s wider question, as I said earlier to the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), it is important for us to look at the issue of documents that are acquired by police officers in relation to investigations or to incidents that they attend and are required in the course of their duty, but which, in the cases that we are discussing, were treated as if they were personal possessions that officers could take home and deal with as they wished. That is an issue to which I shall want to return.