Mayors of Liverpool and Manchester call for 'Hillsborough law'
The mayors of Liverpool and Greater Manchester have written to the three main party leaders strongly criticising the legal system following the acquittal of the Hillsborough match commander, David Duckenfield, on a charge of manslaughter.
In a strongly worded letter, the mayor of Liverpool City region, Steve Rotheram, and Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, as well as Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, call on Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson to introduce without delay the so-called “Hillsborough law” if elected prime minister.
Introduced to parliament as the public authority (accountability) bill, it would require public authorities such as the police, fire brigade and local authorities to have a “duty of candour” in legal processes and provide bereaved families with funding for legal representation equal to that of those public authorities.
“While this won’t change the verdict which has been reached in [the Duckenfield prosecution],” the letter states,
“it will at least be of some comfort to the Hillsborough families for it to be recognised by the country that the failure is not theirs, but of an overly hierarchical and adversarial system which is deeply flawed and in need of fundamental reform.”
Duckenfield, the South Yorkshire police chief superintendent in charge of policing the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on 15 April 1989 when 96 people were fatally injured, was found not guilty of gross negligence manslaughter at Preston crown court on Thursday. The Hillsborough families reacted with outrage to the verdict and the way the trial was conducted, arguing that it reversed the April 2016 verdict of new inquests into the disaster, which found that the 96 people were unlawfully killed owing to Duckenfield’s gross negligence manslaughter.The inquest’s jury also determined that no behaviour by Liverpool supporters contributed to the disaster, rejecting South Yorkshire police officers’ claims that it was exacerbated by supporters being drunk, without tickets and trying to force their way in. At Duckenfield’s prosecution, his barrister, Benjamin Myers QC, nevertheless advanced that case again, and police officers gave evidence to that effect, barely challenged by the Crown Prosecution Service lead barrister, Richard Matthews QC.The letter points out that the judge, Sir Peter Openshaw, allowed Duckenfield to sit in court with his lawyers rather than in the dock. Openshaw said this was to make allowances for his medical conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder, and referred to the defendant in front of the jury as a “poor chap” when he had a chest infection. Aspinall wrote to Openshaw complaining that he was not being impartial, and that his summing-up in the first trial, which ended in a hung jury, had been one-sided. Openshaw replied that he was maintaining the “strong convention” that judges do not discuss their cases.“We can only conclude that the English legal system simply does not work for bereaved families, particularly when they are up against public bodies or the state. It is impersonal, insensitive and emphatically not a level playing field,” the letter says, adding that families bereaved by the Grenfell fire, the Birmingham pub bombings, the contaminated blood scandal and Bloody Sunday face the same disadvantages in their ongoing legal processes.“For bereaved families, walking into an English court is akin to walking into a casino – a place where money and connections talk and where the odds are heavily stacked against them before proceedings have even started. As we have seen, the different legal proceedings – public inquiry, prosecutions and inquests – are not connected, so each successive process can seek to undermine previous findings, however clear and exhaustively reached. “This puts families through torture each and every time.”