Campaigners call for Hillsborough law to ‘level scales of justice’ - The Guardian
Calls for a “Hillsborough law” to rebalance the UK’s justice system and ensure fairer treatment for bereaved families will be made at a high-profile event on Friday.
The Hillsborough Law Now summit will be co-hosted by the mayors of Greater Manchester and Liverpool, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, and will have speakers who include representatives of bereaved families from tragedies past and present.
It has been timed to build on the extra awareness of the issue, which has been revived by the powerful ITV drama Anne that tells the story of Anne Williams’ fight for justice for her teenage son Kevin. The actor Maxine Peake, who played Williams, is expected at the event, which will be livestreamed on Facebook.
Campaigners are calling for measures that were recommended in a 2017 report by Bishop James Jones.
The report had 25 recommendations including a charter for families bereaved through public tragedy; a statutory duty of candour on all police officers; “proper participation” of bereaved families at inquests; and a public advocate for families of the deceased after major incidents.
The campaign says the failures of criminal trials related to Hillsborough have identified new areas that also need to be addressed and enshrined in law.
Burnham said the “appalling treatment of the Hillsborough families at the hands of the legal system shames our nation”.
But he said it was not unique. “From Peterloo 200 years ago to Grenfell today, ordinary bereaved families continue to be treated in a cruel and dismissive way by a justice system which favours the powerful and the connected. It is a pattern that keeps on repeating itself and it is time to break it.
“We need to level up the scales of justice in favour of bereaved families so that the truth is established at the first time of asking. We must spare families the secondary trauma that is often inflicted by cruel treatment at the hands of the system.”
Rotheram said: “What happened at Hillsborough in 1989 and the cover-up that followed is a national disgrace. It is a testament to the courage and determination of the families and campaigners that the truth was finally uncovered after decades of battling against the might of the state. That cannot be allowed to happen again.
“The story of Hillsborough is not an outlier. There are countless other injustices that follow the same pattern. It is time that we broke that cycle and put integrity back at the heart of our justice system.”
Ninety-five men, women and children died immediately or very shortly after they were trapped in the crush in the central “pens” of the Leppings Lane terrace at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground on 15 April 1989.
New inquests, which concluded in 2016, found the victims were unlawfully killed. The match commander, David Duckenfield, was cleared of gross negligence manslaughter in 2019 and a trial of the retired police officers Donald Denton and Alan Foster and the former force solicitor Peter Metcalf, who were accused of perverting the course of justice, collapsed last year after a judge ruled there was no case to answer.
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source: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jan/07/campaigners-hillsborough-law-justice-manchester-liverpool-mayors-bereaved-families
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