Maria Eagle MP: speeches

I know Marie Lyon; I have met her on a number of occasions because I have constituents who are affected. She runs the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests, and she has been the mainstay of the campaign, which has been going on since 1978, to try and get some resolution for these matters. I am happy to support my hon. Friend’s thanks to her. One thing that could assist those families in respect of Primodos is an independent panel, which would go much further than the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency expert working group, and which would collect documents and approach the issue from a transparency point of view. Given that the families’ attempted legal actions have not succeeded, that seems to me a likely next way forward. But the reality is that if the Bill comes into force and independent panels are not specifically included, those families may feel as though they are in a disadvantageous position. It is on that basis that I seek to move amendment 1.

Indeed.

I rise briefly to emphasise some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby and urge the Minister to consider whether more can be done in that respect. The lesson of Hillsborough is that the organisations at fault set about using every pound they had available to defend themselves—and we will hear more in the IOPC report, to be published later today. Those senior offices who made decisions to use the public money that they had in that way simply elongated and lengthened the amount of agony and pain. A corporate fine against an organisation may not be enough to deter that kind of behaviour, so I urge the Minister to consider what more might be done in terms of command responsibility.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Roger. I just want to say a few words on this clause about why the duty of candour and assistance is so important, and why it means so much to Hillsborough families, some of whom are my constituents. We heard from a small number of them in the evidence sessions, but there are many more who could have told equally difficult stories about their own experience. What happened at Hillsborough was a disaster. Nobody who worked for South Yorkshire police left their homes that morning intending to cause it, but the reality is that their gross negligence and inadequate organisation did cause it. Within four and a half months, the public inquiry had identified a loss of police control as the main cause of the disaster. Had our state been operating fully and correctly, we would have recognised that as a country and that would have been the end of the matter. There would have been accountability for those failings, lessons would have been learned, and the families could have grieved for their lost loved ones and moved on with their lives. Instead, what happened was that the South Yorkshire police, aided and abetted by the West Midlands police, set about telling a story, intent only on deflecting blame for their own failings—even though those failings were then identified within four and a half months. One can understand, perhaps, why a police force faced with that disaster would have wanted to give their side of the story and understanding of what had happened. However, once the public inquiry—within four and a half months—had made findings that excoriated the police response to the disaster, accused a senior officer of telling a disgraceful lie and said in terms that the police would have been better advised to have accepted responsibility rather than sought to put forward a different story that was not credible, one would have expected that there would have been accountability, that the truth would have been accepted by the South Yorkshire police and that there would have been no more attempts to put forward a different narrative. That did not happen. Instead, the then inquest proceedings—the longest in British legal history at that time, taking over a year—were used in terms by the South Yorkshire police to tell a different story: to put it in the public mind that they had not been at fault, as the public inquiry had clearly found, but that it had been the fans who had attended the match who had been at fault. It had been those who died who had contributed in some way to their own deaths. It had been the survivors of that terrible disaster who had somehow caused the problem. It had been hooliganism and drunkenness—it had been ticketless fans who had forced their way into the grounds. That is the story that the police told, aided and abetted by the media of the day, some of which behaved disgracefully and suffer for it still on Merseyside, I might say. That story was told repeatedly. It was in every newspaper and all the mini-inquests for over a year of those inquest proceedings. At the end of it, the public perception about what had happened at Hillsborough was completely different from what the public inquiry had found. It was as if the public inquiry had never happened; yet it was right in almost every aspect, and within four and a half months of the disaster. It is now 36 years since the disaster. In our evidence sessions, we heard from some of the families about the ongoing impact of the lies that were told and the story that has been repeatedly told by South Yorkshire police and those responsible for the disaster, who have been completely unable to accept their culpability. Even as late as the second inquest, they tried again to tell that same discredited story, so the importance of this clause cannot be overemphasised. It gets to the heart of why one might wish to call this a Hillsborough law, even though that is not the Bill’s short title. It might be known colloquially as that, because the fact is that, had those public authorities had the duties provided for in clause 2, there is no way they could have undertaken that campaign of lies, disinformation and propaganda against the wholly innocent families and wholly innocent survivors of that disaster. It is for that reason that I think it is important that the duty of candour and assistance is an essential part of the Bill. If we enact it and implement it properly without any concerns or problems, that duty is one of the things that will enable us to say that this is a Hillsborough law because, had it been in place at the time, the South Yorkshire or West Midlands police could not have engaged in the disgraceful way that they did, simply to deflect the blame on to anybody else but them—even if that hurt those who had died, the families of those who had died, or the thousands and thousands of survivors. We forget that it was not only my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby who was at the match; thousands of people saw what happened. It was filmed and shown live on TV, so the idea that it could be distorted in the way that it has been—at great public expense and over decades—is a terrible disgrace to the way that our systems work. If the Bill can put that right, it will have done our whole nation a service, and it will be right to call it a Hillsborough law. It will mean that those families can stop their campaigning and start to grieve and live what is left of their lives. Some 36 years on from what happened, surely they have a right to expect that.

Does the hon. Member accept that matters of party political difference in a political system are not the same as telling the truth about what happened in a disaster or an event? There is a distinction.

I was looking at the amendment paper this morning. It was probably mistyped, but my copy says that the Secretary of State must introduce a standard template for “ethical conduct of conduct”. Should that be “codes of conduct” or “ethical conduct”?

I can understand why Members might feel a certain amount of scepticism about the idea that an obligation to try to remember disappearing messages might be adequate. I do not know how many messages other Committee members send, but I think we have all got into the habit of sending rather a lot. Could there not be an arrangement, either in the code of ethics or in the policies and procedures of organisations, to make sure that people do not use WhatsApp for official business? We could also make sure that whatever chat people do use—it might be an internal arrangement—messages are properly kept and we therefore do not have to rely on dodgy memories of disappearing messages to make sure that messages are preserved for any future inquiry.

Having had the chance to have a very quick look at the report being published at 1 o’clock, does my hon. Friend agree that the IOPC has found that the chief constable of South Yorkshire police at the time, the match commander, the deputy match commander, the deputy chief constable and a total of 10 senior officers at South Yorkshire police likely should have been charged with gross misconduct, which, had it been found, could have led to dismissal, even by the rules that pertained at the time? The fact that there has been no accountability for any of those people in 36 years shows that we have to make sure that there is a way in which the individuals responsible can be properly held to account, and justice can be reached.

No, don’t worry. Jenni Hicks: I know from experience and my journey that it was the thing that worked. It just worked. What worked was being able to read the documents. When Bishop James Jones made his report, he pointed it out in his 25 points of learning. It is right at the top: being able to retrieve the documents. When it comes to this culture change, sometimes they think they are not actually lying; they are just not telling the truth. I have not quite worked out what the difference between those two things is. I have tried to analyse it—lawyers are very good at that. That has to be part of it to strengthen the Bill and make it the best it can be. With all Pete Weatherby’s hard work—I thank everybody who has worked so hard to get this as good as it is—the Bill is good, but adding the public advocate to it, with the power of being able to retrieve the documentation, would really strengthen it. That would help to fill the gap until the culture changes. The culture is not going to change straight away; it is possibly going to take years, because it has gone on for so long. There are people like the veterans of nuclear testing—their concerns go back to the 1950s. This has gone on for a very long time. It is not a new thing. We desperately need that change to strengthen the Bill. It is already good, particularly if you implement Pete Weatherby’s most recent amendments, but this would make it watertight. It would certainly make people in power think twice about covering things up if they knew that they would have to show the documentation.

Q Inquests are supposed to be inquisitorial; they are not supposed to be adversarial. Deborah Coles, I know that probably all the inquests your organisation handles are adversarial. The Bill looks to ensure that public authorities’ legal representation is necessary and proportionate. How do you see that impacting on your daily experience of the coronial system? Deborah Coles: If I am answering the right question, it should reduce the number of state lawyers that turn up to inquests and ensure a more equal playing field. I have two quick things that I want to say. First, it is quite shameful that successive Governments cannot tell us the cost to the public purse of state lawyers rocking up to inquests across the country. That information is not there and it should be. This Government have made a commitment to try to make sure that such information is made available. If we are talking about parity and proportionality, there needs to be proper monitoring of why a public body has sent a lawyer to an inquest process. They should be there to assist the uncovering of the truth and the process, but in my experience, too often teams of lawyers from different state bodies turn up at the inquest and work together, or if they do not work together, they try to pass the buck to each other. The time at which you see them at their most active and animated is at the point at which the coroner is going to decide questions that may be left to an inquest jury. Inquest juries play a very vital role at inquest, I should point out, because they can report on narrative conclusions around systemic failings that they have heard about through the evidence that has come out through the inquest. You see these lawyers standing up arguing with the coroner about what questions should be left to the jury and trying to minimise any criticism of their particular public body. Importantly, they try and persuade the coroner not to make a prevention of future deaths report, which of course can be so important in trying to stop similar deaths happening in the future. Hopefully, we will see a change in that culture of just sending lawyers, period, to inquests. Professor Waters: I can see you are going to try and stop this, but—

Yes—so that whoever is in charge actually bears the legal liability for any failings that are discovered. Lord Evans of Weardale: I am always rather cautious of answering quasi-legal questions on the hoof, because I am not a lawyer.

Q Do you think that the parity of arms, however it is achieved—whether it is bringing down the level of representation of the public authorities or increasing the level of representation of the bereaved families—might make things less adversarial and better? You have raised some concerns about the extra work it might lead to coroners having to do. Judge Durran: It is too binary to say that lawyers are good or lawyers are bad. Lawyers for the family will give them a better voice, will enable them to be better engaged, and will help families better understand some of the complexity of the evidence or decision making. On the other side of the question, I would be sad to see public authorities lose lawyers where there is a complexity to the evidence that needs to be explored; I think that better enables questions to be answered. It is too binary to say lawyers are good or lawyers are bad; everyone has to be working with the same objective, which regrettably does not always happen.

Q Thank you; that is interesting. Does that mean that, if there is an amendment, as there may be later in Committee, to introduce command responsibility rather than just corporate liability, it would actually not concern the agencies too much, because that is what you understand the current drafting of the legislation to do? Lord Evans of Weardale: Command responsibility?

It would be perfectly reasonable for you to write to the Committee with a more considered response. Lord Evans of Weardale: I will look at the possibility of doing that. Again, I would have to talk to lawyers; I am not sure that I am the best source of legal advice to you. I have talked about exactly the same question a little bit with some of my previous colleagues, and the view from that, which I think has some weight, is that the director of the agency has personal criminal liability if they fail in their duty on this. I do not think you should see this as a carve-out for the agencies.

Q We heard a concern earlier from Mr Weatherby of Hillsborough Law Now about the current drafting of the Bill effectively carving out the intelligence service from the same responsibility, as it applies to other public officials. He was concerned that schedule 1, which is an amendment to other legislation, meant that there is only corporate liability here. Is that your understanding of the way in which this is working? Lord Evans of Weardale: My understanding is that the responsibility rests on the agency, rather than any one individual, to proactively provide the information, although the liability on the head of the agency includes criminal liability, should they fail to do that.

Q I would like to welcome Jenni and Hilda, who are my constituents, to the Committee. You have both mentioned the importance of getting to the truth fast, and you said, Jenni, that it was only the Hillsborough independent panel, over two decades later, that actually got to the truth and had it accepted. You received an apology from the Prime Minister of the day about what had happened. Jenni Hicks: A double apology.

Q The original Hillsborough inquests, which were the longest in legal history at the time, in 1990, did not answer the four statutory questions in respect of each and every one of those who died who were the subject of them. They were, indeed, used as a way of overturning Taylor. That is what my constituents who I met when I became an MP told me was the effect of that inquest. It was not the inquest; it was actually the Hillsborough independent panel that answered those four statutory questions, but unfortunately that did not happen for 24 years. Do you believe that this Bill, and introducing legal representation for families and the concept of parity, might serve to address that kind of problem that you get when inquests become adversarial—as, increasingly, some of them do—or do you believe it might serve to prompt more inquests to become adversarial? Do you have a concern about that? Judge Durran: I have a concern because, as I have said, a coroner has to answer four statutory questions. If an inquest engages article 2, the “how” becomes “in what circumstances”, but they are very narrow questions that should be answered. A coroner has to be very clear in answering those four questions in setting their scope—in setting the parameters of their investigation in answering those questions. There is very often a tension between what a coroner feels they need to hear to answer the statutory questions, and some wider questions that family may want answered. That remains a tension that I am not sure that this Bill is necessarily going to answer.

We may be agreeing.

Apologies, Mr Dowd. I have concluded.

Q It is very interesting to hear the evidence you have both given. I am interested in not only the parity of arms but the concept of a public authority’s legal representation being necessary and proportionate. We have heard a lot of evidence that those with unlimited public funds at their disposal tend to think that what is necessary and proportionate is a very large legal team. Obviously, inquests are not supposed to be adversarial—we know that, in some instances, they become adversarial. What do you think is necessary and proportionate from the point of view of a public authority? One way of getting parity of arms is to cut down the number of lawyers that public authorities are paying to attend inquests. Chris Minnoch: I have some initial thoughts. I have to say that I am speaking only on behalf of the lawyers who represent bereaved families; I cannot speak for lawyers who represent public authorities—I have no experience of that. We have already heard evidence today that the critical aspects of the Bill are those that will change the culture within public authorities. That is not going to happen overnight, because it is a cultural shift that is required, which will take some time, and because there are consequences for the individuals involved in those public authorities, based on what could come out of it. What we want the legal aid provisions to do, including on parity of arms, is assist those broader duties to take place. I do not think that it is going to happen from day one, and nor does any lawyer I have spoken to who does inquest work. I do not think an inquest that takes place the day after the Bill receives Royal Assent will be an open and transparent process, as the Bill anticipates. For me, one of the key aspects of the legal aid elements is the ability of the lawyers, not just when the proceedings commence, but in the conduct of the parties leading up to the inquest, including the disclosure elements and the openness and willingness to reveal information to the bereaved family’s lawyers—that is the critical part for me to begin with. The family’s lawyers can then assist the coroner in making an assessment of the conduct, and I think it is the conduct of the public authority that is key, when you are thinking about parity of arms. I made the point earlier that I do not think the bereaved family is going to be overly concerned about the number of lawyers on the other side, if those lawyers are actively assisting the inquest. If they are not, it is a much bigger issue. Richard Miller: I think there are a couple of measures in the Bill that helpfully come together to try to encourage greater parity, including the duty of candour and the fact that the Ministry responsible for the public body is going to be asked to meet the legal costs of the bereaved family. They come together to put an onus on the public body and the Ministry responsible for it to be proportionate. If they create a situation where they are requiring the bereaved family’s lawyer to undertake a lot more work, they will ultimately have to meet the costs. As Mr Minnoch says, it is not going to happen overnight; it is going to be a change that has effect over a number of years. But these are, I think, useful nudge factors in the right direction to get to the level of parity that we are trying to achieve here—

A double apology, indeed. To what extent do you think the Bill would benefit from having some provisions, if they could be fitted into order, about empowering independent panels to do that kind of job? Jenni Hicks: I strongly feel that it is necessary. I have thought very long and hard about, “What was it that made a difference? What made a difference in your journey?” We tried everything, as you know, Maria, and as Ian knows. We wanted not only the truth about our loved ones but to stop the lies that were being told about the fans. It was a double whammy, if you like: we could not get the truth about our loved ones who had died, and the supporters were wrongly being blamed. We were hitting brick walls everywhere we turned. There was scrutiny and numerous inquiries, but everywhere they came back with the same lies and the same cover-up story. The only thing that stopped that was the Hillsborough independent panel, which showed the power of being able to retrieve the documentation. I was looking through all the documentation, including Bishop James Jones’s 25 points of learning, and point 3 says that you need to have “full disclosure of relevant documents, material and facts”. You have to have those quickly, because without them it is going to take longer. When you think about it, it would save money too. The public—the taxpayers of this country—are paying for all of these inquiries and all this scrutiny. I would love to know just how much the Hillsborough journey up to HIP cost; I bet you it was an awful lot of money. And the taxpayer was paying for that. Something like the public advocate, with similar or the same powers to get the documentation as the Hillsborough panel, would save money too. It would be a cost-saving exercise. Yes, with all of Pete Weatherby’s amendments—all the good things he has suggested—it would be a good Bill, but we need the back-up of something like the independent panel to help to strengthen it. I really do believe in that. Sorry if I am going on about it—

Q In view of what you have said, do you think that your current powers are adequate? If it were in order for us to put something about your role into the Bill, would you think that your powers ought to be expanded and, if so, in what way? Very quickly. Cindy Butts: Very quickly? Exceptional circumstances —I absolutely think that that should be something that I can recommend. Where there is a case that requires my involvement, I should be able to make representations to the Secretary of State in that respect. As I said before, the issue of being able to access information might be an area where further powers are required, although that should be dealt with very carefully, because we are not an investigatory body and neither should we be. However, it is certainly worth considering whether we should be a sort of safe house to guard information. Also, in terms of the duty to—

Q Welcome, Mr Weatherby. I would like to ask about two things, one of which is command responsibility. With Hillsborough, within four and half months, Lord Justice Taylor’s report quite rightly pinned the main blame on South Yorkshire police’s lack of proper behaviour on the day. If you had had command responsibility, that would have included the South Yorkshire chief constable and perhaps the match commander, who we know lied live on TV about what had happened. Do you think that the Bill, without command responsibility, would have managed to deal with that big problem at Hillsborough—the cover-up and the lies that were told to defend the match commander, presumably authorised and okayed by the chief constable? Do you think that the provisions, as they are, would have prevented that cover-up? Pete Weatherby: I do not think there is a clear yes or no answer to that, but it is not strong enough. The purpose of what we want to do with command responsibility is to stop the chief constable thinking that it is okay to put the false narrative forward. If there is a legal responsibility on the chief constable to discharge the corporate duty, he is not going to do that. I think that if the amendment is made, the answer is yes; if the Bill is left as it is, it is more complicated. If it is left, I think it will make a big difference, but it will not stop as many of the problems. There are other examples. Going back to Manchester Arena, the chief constable of Manchester put forward false evidence to the Kerslake inquiry. Those are not my words; he subsequently described it as “a very grave error”. He did that because he did not have command responsibility, and he thought he could get away with it. The command responsibility needs to be made clear, and the provision in clause 2(5) does not go far enough—it is ineffective.

Q Do you agree that accountability of those responsible is one of the main things that families in disasters want? Pete Weatherby: Yes, absolutely.

Q I just want your views, Mr Guest, on whether the new offences—committing a seriously improper act in public office and the breach of duty to prevent death and serious injury—would have applied in the Hillsborough circumstances? A match commander ordered the gate opened, which led to the crush, and then lied, immediately on national TV and subsequently, about his actions by saying that the fans had broken the gate down. Would that constitute a seriously improper act or a breach of duty to prevent death or serious injury? Subsequently, there was a cover-up that involved police officers from South Yorkshire and West Midlands police altering statements to try to get across a narrative about what had happened that was different from the truth. None of the officers who engaged in any of that has ever been found guilty of any offence or held to account in any way. Do you believe that if the offences in the Bill had been on the statute book at the time, there would have been a proper chance to hold those officers to account? Tom Guest: I begin by echoing what the previous Director of Public Prosecutions, Max Hill, said of his sorrow and regret about the outcome of those trials. He was also focused on whether there was an opportunity to put better and clearer law plainly and clearly on the statute book. We feel that that has happened in this Bill. I am afraid that, even if I had seen the evidence, I would not be prepared to comment on particular cases and particular situations. Do I think that the new provisions better and effectively reflect the law on misconduct in public office? Yes, I do. Are there any risks to the provisions? No, we have not identified any. That is perhaps as much as I can assist.

They want to know what happened, and they want accountability where there have been errors or grave mistakes. In the Hillsborough case, of course, the match commander lied and then tried to cover up—unsuccessfully, in the end—what had really happened by smearing Liverpool fans and those who had died. It took many years—well, until the Hillsborough independent panel convinced the country of the truth— Pete Weatherby: In 2012.

Q The Bill seeks to deal with these things by having proper equal legal representation, which is a good thing in my view. Do you think it is enough? Again, it was the Hillsborough independent panel, a non-legal process, that finally got to the truth. All the legal actions that had taken place before it did not achieve that. What role do you think there is for panel-like arrangements? Pete Weatherby: I think there is a huge role, and there is a discretion within the Government Bill to extend the duty of candour to panels. We would like that to be stronger—that would be great. Of course, there is no one size fits all. As somebody who has been involved in many public inquiries, I have a major criticism of the length of them. The duty of candour will scythe down the length of public inquiries, if it is used properly. Yes, there is an extension of legal aid in the Bill, but it will be dwarfed by the amount of money that will be saved if the duty of candour is used appropriately and properly. On your point, absolutely, there is a huge role. I have been on panels myself, and it definitely is not a one size fits all. Internationally, there is learning about this. The best example is probably New Zealand, where there is a smorgasbord of different processes.

In 2012. It took a long time for that to be fully put to bed. Pete Weatherby: Without a blink, in all the cases that I have done, you start with the tragedy itself, and of course everybody wants to know exactly what did or did not happen, but the cover-up does so much damage. People are absolutely outraged. Unfortunately, you cannot undo the bomb or the crush—whatever has caused it— but you then have it compounded by a cover-up, which does so much damage.

rose—

The Prime Minister knows that, for over two decades, the legal system failed to provide truth and justice to the Hillsborough families, and it was only a non-legal process—the Hillsborough independent panel—that finally set things right on the road to truth, justice and accountability. Does he see any prospect, therefore, that we will include in the legislation at a later stage provision to ensure that a Hillsborough independent panel-type process can be offered to families involved in future disasters, to try to circumvent the long-standing failure of the criminal justice system to offer truth and accountability to families quickly?

This is the first time that any Government have brought forward legislation to tackle what went wrong at Hillsborough. It is a fulfilment of a Labour manifesto commitment and a commitment by my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister, and I congratulate him on it. I rise to support the legislation. The duty of candour with effective sanctions and equality of arms are all good, and will make a difference. However, I think that the Bill should also seek to boost the powers and capabilities of the office of the new Independent Public Advocate, and I want to explain why. I was first elected to this House in May 1997, and I have been making speeches about the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath ever since. The disaster happened a full eight years before I was elected more than 28 years ago. As a trainee lawyer in Liverpool, I got to know some of the bereaved families only a year after the disaster, in 1990, as they sought to recover damages for nervous shock, which was a way of reaching a legal finding of culpability against the police. The bereaved families did not want to make money; they wanted the police to accept the blame that they should have accepted. This was one of a number of legal actions ongoing at the time. I worked on some of those cases at the direction of my principal, who was on the steering committee of solicitors conducting that civil litigation, and while I did not have conduct, I was familiar with matters and met some of the families at the time. Some of the bereaved families became constituents of mine when I was elected in 1997. Indeed, some of the very first meetings I had with constituents after my election were with members of the executive of the Hillsborough Family Support Group—Trevor and Jenni Hicks, Hilda and Phil Hammond, and Doreen Jones, who between them lost five family members at Hillsborough. Four of them were my constituents, and three of them still are all these years later. I think that my long and close involvement with some of the families gives me some insight into what went wrong, and I have some observations. My first observation about the disaster, as I have alluded to already, is that the legal system—the entire justice system—showed itself to be totally unable to deal properly with the aftermath or even to fulfil its basic functions in the face of a national disaster. This disaster unfolded live on TV at a very high-profile national event; we all saw what happened. There was a large appetite in society to get to the bottom of what had happened. Within four months of the disaster occurring, the interim report of the public inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor had correctly identified the loss of police control as the main cause of the disaster, excoriating South Yorkshire police for its attempt to evade responsibility for what occurred by trying to blame Liverpool fans and telling the force to modify its behaviour. That is where truth and accountability could have been established. But South Yorkshire police simply ignored the findings of the public inquiry and used all subsequent legal proceedings —all paid for with public money, with expensive lawyers doing the job—and most notably the first inquest, to redouble its efforts to evade responsibility. Eight years of legal action had failed to get to the truth by the time I was elected in 1997. There was no justice for those involved, and particularly for those who, as we now know, were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough. There was not a sniff of accountability for those whose gross failings had led to the disaster or those whose subsequent behaviour in blaming the victims and survivors led to so much anguish over so many years for so many families and survivors. That is despite the fact that every possible kind of legal action had been undertaken in that time—none of them worked. Once the justice system gets it wrong, and appeals and judicial reviews do not succeed, it is almost impossible to get it right subsequently using the same system. It seemed like the truth did not matter to the justice system. The system was content to settle on a lie, with inquest verdicts of accidental death and no criminal or disciplinary proceedings for those at fault. It was content to allow the perpetrators to peddle the appalling falsehood that the disaster was caused by Liverpool fans being drunk, late and ticketless. This was a South Yorkshire police cover story, and what they aimed at establishing as the truth through the systematic changing of police statements. That effort failed spectacularly at the public inquiry and was repudiated within four months of the disaster, but the justice system allowed the perpetuation of this mendacious false narrative by those who had been identified as at fault: senior South Yorkshire police officers. The first inquests allowed ongoing reports in the newspapers for over a year about the inquest proceedings, firmly to establish in the public mind that the false narrative was true. It was as if the public inquiry and its findings had never happened. Those who had caused the disaster were retired early on enhanced pensions. Society got the impression that the disaster was about football hooliganism, and the unlawful killings were said to be just “an accident”—despite the findings of Lord Justice Taylor in the public inquiry. That is where the justice system, and the lawyers and judges, got us to. The way I see it, the justice system might properly be said to have failed in all respects and at every turn in this most appalling miscarriage of justice imaginable. The legal system failed. Multiple lawyers, judges and causes of action failed: failed to get to the truth, failed to do so in a timely fashion and failed to make those responsible accountable. The system failed the bereaved families, it failed the survivors and it failed those who died. To the extent that this Bill suggests that more lawyers and an equality of arms before the law is enough to guarantee truth and justice, I say it is not enough. That, to me, is one of the main lessons of Hillsborough, and I say that as a lawyer, because I am indeed a lawyer. It is a good thing that an equality of arms is to be set up in legal proceedings, and it is a good thing that families can get the help that they need. I support that, but it does not guarantee truth, justice or accountability. I have met many families bereaved by public disasters —not just those affected at Hillsborough but the MV Derbyshire families, the Alder Hey organs scandal families, Manchester arena bombing families—and they all want pretty much the same thing. They want the truth, and they want it as quickly as possible. They want accountability for those at fault, not official cover-ups. They do not want any other families to go through what they have endured; they all say that—they want lessons learned and what went wrong put right for the future. That is simple. It is not too much to ask. Those are the three tests by which I judge the adequacy of legislation that sets out to learn the lessons of Hillsborough, including this Bill. I was a sponsor of the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, introduced in 2017 by Andy Burnham, which was the precursor to this legislation. I can see nothing wrong at all with having a duty of candour in statute. It helps get across to public officials subject to it the importance of telling the truth to inquiries and investigations and that their functions should be carried out with candour, transparency and frankness. I would have hoped that they would all have known this anyway, but apparently some of them need to be reminded. I note that this legislation takes up more rather more pages establishing a duty than the original 2017 Bill, but I have no doubt that these changes and their import will be fully scrutinised in Committee and we can understand the intention fully. I know that there will be significant interest in the legislation, not only in this House but in the other place. Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report—“The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”, which is about the lessons learned from Hillsborough—recommended, along with his 24 additional points of learning, enacting Andy Burnham’s Public Authority (Accountability) Bill. However, lying liars are going to lie, and although I am not convinced that, had this legislation been in place at the time of Hillsborough, the cover-up would not have been attempted, I am gratified to see—this is certainly the case—that there would have been more opportunities to punish those caught lying when they were caught. The more serious punishments in the Bill for breaching a duty of candour are a good thing, but would this have stopped the cover-up or the long years of agony endured by families and survivors? We have to take this opportunity —it will be the only one—to enact legislation that has a chance of achieving this. I have spent the last few years trying to tackle the way in which we deal with the aftermath of disasters from a slightly different angle. Since 2016, I have been introducing to the House an independent public advocate Bill, which I have worked on with Lord Wills in the other place. He has been introducing it there since 2014. It was drafted after work we did with some Hillsborough families and those affected by other disasters. It arises out of the following insight. The legal system has failed repeatedly in the aftermath of disasters, but the Hillsborough independent panel succeeded spectacularly. It was established in 2009 by the Labour Government of Gordon Brown after the 20th anniversary of Hillsborough, and it reported in 2012, under the Conservative Government, who allowed it to complete its work despite the era of austerity, thanks in large part to Theresa May. Finally, the truth that the South Yorkshire police had tried to cover up for all those years was established in the public consciousness. The fans were not at fault. The police caused the disaster. Many of those who died could have been saved had they received timely medical assistance. The police engaged in an appalling cover-up, and set out to deflect blame from themselves on to fans, including by attempting a wholesale revision of police witness statements to better reflect the cover-up story, and to erase any statements that seemed to point the blame at senior officers. They also took blood alcohol readings, even from the children who died—the youngest was 10, let us remember—to try to smear them as somehow being at fault. There were shocking revelations in the report, and it led to an immediate re-appraisal of the public view of what had occurred. It led to an apology to the families by David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the day, and a striking down of the accidental death inquest verdicts, which were eventually substituted with unlawful killing verdicts—but not before South Yorkshire police had again tried to tell its cover-up story, over an agonising two-year legal process, in the second inquests. This was a terrible ordeal for families, and it only concluded in 2016. The Hillsborough independent panel was not a legal proceeding. It was about the transparent release of documents, freedom of information, and a narrative account arising out of the study of the documents. Lawyers were not involved. The Bill that I keep introducing to the House would enable a public advocate to assist families in getting to the truth much sooner, in the event of a disaster, because it would replicate that same process at a much earlier stage in the disaster’s aftermath. I believe that would promote the telling of truth at a much earlier stage. Shining the light of transparency on the activity of public officials in the aftermath of a disaster will torpedo cover-ups before they can get very far—and at a significantly lower cost to the public purse and faster than our justice system has shown itself able to. The Hillsborough independent panel did in two years what the justice system had failed to do in 24 years. This kind of proceeding has the potential to enable families to side-step the years of overlapping legal actions that they get caught up in after public disasters. I think it would be a useful addition to the armoury for families who want the truth and accountability quickly, and who want lessons to be learned. Families bereaved by public disasters should have the option of asking for such a process at a much earlier stage in the aftermath, and that should be up to them. A version of the Independent Public Advocate was brought in by the previous Government towards the end of their time in office, and an appointment to the office has been made by the current Government. However, I do not believe that she has sufficient powers or resource to do the job that my Bill envisaged being done. I may well try to explore in Committee, where it is in order, what can be done about that. I believe that provision for an independent public advocate would increase the range of options for bereaved families in the aftermath of public disasters like Hillsborough. It would mean that families had a greater choice of how to take forward their efforts. It would be a good addition. The truth, quickly; accountability, not cover-up; justice for those affected; and lessons learned and swiftly, and implemented so that nobody else has to suffer the same way—that is what families want, and this Bill must be judged on how well it promotes those aims. I think it will do so very well.