Inquests will bring families transparency and justice
It is a story that has lasted 30 years, and involved several police investigations, countless column inches and no doubt immeasurable tears from the families caught up in it. And having reported on many false dawns in the saga of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital deaths, we should know to apply some, say, realism if not scepticism to claims of progress in the case; but perhaps this time we are getting somewhere.
The headline is that ‘Hillsborough-style’ inquests may take place. It’s an attentiongrabbing shorthand that the families and the lawyers are using to explain the format, but a useful one as the parallels with the Hillsborough tragedy are increasing all the time.
The Hillsborough families struggled for years to be believed. While the Gosport families have, at least, not had their relatives’ names blackened by slurs shamefully pushed out by the police and amplified by the media, the fight to be heard and to be believed is similar. One of the issues that Gosport has had is that the evidence had never been collated in full, with too many stories remaining as individual cases. The Bishop James Jones panel started to right this wrong, and full inquests of several deaths would more clearly help to show any patterns at play. It would also make it easier to bring criminal prosecutions, if appropriate.
Hillsborough, rightly, shocked the country and brought about seismic changes throughout football. The number of deaths at Gosport is significantly more, though obviously over a longer period of time. However, while questions still linger over the circumstances of what went on it remains a shameful episode in the history of this country’s healthcare.
We firmly back the plan for inquests, and we hope every family who wishes to is able to participate. In this case, transparency will be justice. Let us see all the evidence, let us see a coroner and jury given as much time as they need to assess what happened, and let us hope that slowly families are able to move forward.