Keir Starmer told families affected by the Hillsborough disaster and cover-up that the long-awaited Bill in their honour would not be watered down
Families and victims of the Hillsborough disaster were failed to an “almost inhuman level”, Keir Starmer has told MPs.
He introduced the long-awaited Hillsborough Bill, which he said would be a “legacy of justice” for the 97 football fans who died following the 1989 tragedy. Many of their loved ones watched on as the Prime Minister vowed: “This Bill will not be watered down.”
The legislation will create a legal duty of candour for all public officials, such as police officers, with criminal penalties for lying or withholding information. It will also end the “David and Goliath” battle with an expansion of legal aid.
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Mr Starmer told the Commons: “I want to begin this debate with a simple acknowledgment, long overdue, that the British state failed the families and victims of Hillsborough to an almost inhuman level.” He said: “We often call Hillsborough a tragedy, but it’s more than a tragedy, because the disaster was not down to chance, it was not an accident.
“It was not an accident. It was an injustice, and then further injustice piled on top when the state subjected those families to endure from the police lies and smears against their loved ones while the central state, the government, aided and abetted them for years and years and years.
“A cover-up by the very institutions that are supposed to protect and to serve. It is nothing less than a stain on the modern history of this country.” Families of those who died in a preventable crush at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield have faced a decades-long battle beset by cover-ups. Liverpool fans were wrongly blamed for the disaster, which happened during an FA Cup semi-final match against Nottingham Forest.
Since then many more similar failings have occured, Mr Starmer said. He pointed to the Horizon scandal, Grenfell Tower, infected blood, Windrush and grooming gangs.
The Prime Minister said: “We should also be blunt that there’s a pattern common to all these scandals that time and again, the British state struggles to recognise injustice because of who the victims are, because they’re working-class, because they’re black, because they’re women and girls. That is the injustice that this Bill seeks to correct.”
It took until 2016 for the results of initial inquests to be quashed and verdicts of unlawful killing to be recorded.
Four years earlier an independent inquiry found the main cause of the disaster was lack of police control, with crowd safety “compromised at every level”.
It also found that 41 victims could have survived if emergency services had co-ordinated their response better.
Subsequent court cases failed to bring anyone to justice, but a report by Bishop James Jones of Liverpool found systemic failings were caused by “the patronising disposition of unaccountable power”.