Bereaved families have urged ministers to introduce the Hillsborough law in full, according to a new report, as Labour admitted that a promise to bring legislation to parliament by the 36th anniversary of the disaster would be broken.
The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and the Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds attended the “family listening day” event on 3 February, which the Ministry of Justice funded, organised by the campaign group Inquest.
The report of the listening day, titled All or Nothing, records the overwhelming view of attenders that the government must not retreat from its commitment to guard against future cover-ups by implementing a legally enforceable “duty of candour” on public authorities.
But despite the event, and Labour’s manifesto pledge to introduce the Hillsborough law, the government has been rewriting the key proposals. After a furious reaction from families, Keir Starmer is now expected to break his promise to bring the law to parliament by 15 April, the 36th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. On Friday Mahmood and Thomas-Symonds co-signed a letter to family members acknowledging that the promise would be broken.
The growing row has come after years of committed Labour support for the law, which was drafted by the Hillsborough families’ barrister Pete Weatherby KC and first introduced at Westminster by Andy Burnham in 2017. Starmer has repeatedly promised to introduce it, including in conference speeches he gave in Liverpool in 2022 and 2024.
“For too long this city has been let down,” Starmer said in 2022. “So, when Labour wins the next election, one of my first acts as prime minister will be to put the Hillsborough law on the statute book.”
Repeating that pledge in 2024, Starmer described it as a “law for Liverpool, a law for the 97 [victims of the Hillsborough disaster]” and a law for victims of the Post Office, infected blood and Windrush scandals, the Grenfell fire, “and all the countless injustices over the years, suffered by working people at the hands of those who were supposed to serve them”.
People whose relatives were killed in those disasters and victims of those scandals attended the Inquest listening day event with Mahmood and Thomas-Symonds.
“Participants highlighted egregious cover-ups and outright lies told by officials in public services,” the report says. Families at the event insisted that “thorough enforcement of the duty of candour” was needed, with sanctions and penalties for public officials who “knowingly obstruct justice”.
The Hillsborough law drafted by Weatherby sets out the legal terms for such a duty of candour, as well as a justice measure emphasised by bereaved families for decades: public funding for legal representation equal to that of public authorities at inquests and inquiries.
Despite Starmer’s promises, families have been told that the government’s new draft is based more on public authorities signing up to a charter, without strong legal enforcement, and does not include the funding for legal representation. A government media briefing last week that said the draft law could have led to civil servants being prosecuted for telling a white lie about being late for work to bosses has prompted fury from families, as it has always been clear that criminal sanctions would be for police or public officials misleading the public.
In their letter last Friday, Mahmood and Thomas-Symonds said the government remained committed to “a Hillsborough law that will include a legal duty of candour for public servants and criminal sanctions for those who refuse to comply. We are not walking away”.
Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James was one of the 97 people unlawfully killed at Hillsborough, said of the listening day: “After hearing the stories of all the other families fighting for justice, I am more determined than ever to demand that the Hillsborough law presented to parliament is ‘all or nothing’.”
Deborah Coles, the director of Inquest, said the “disappointing” delay should be used as “an urgent opportunity” to ensure the law was introduced in full. “The evidence in our report is too compelling and stark to ignore. Anything less will be a betrayal.”
