The UK Parliament introduced the Hillsborough Law on Monday, imposing a legal duty of candour on public officials following disasters. Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer acknowledged the British state failed victims and families of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster «to an almost inhuman level».
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill will apply criminal sanctions to authorities attempting to cover up facts after disasters. It extends to private contractors providing services for publicly funded bodies and will be enforced across the United Kingdom once passed, though not retrospectively.
Starmer declared the 97 victims were unlawfully killed. He told Parliament: «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 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.»
Pattern of injustice
The Prime Minister vowed the legislation would not be watered down. He told MPs: «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.»
Shadow justice minister Kieran Mullan called for the Bill to «provide the necessary legal clarity to underpin its successful operation». He warned the terminology needs careful consideration regarding how campaign groups might use it to legally challenge government decisions.
The 1989 FA Cup semi-final disaster at Sheffield killed 97 football fans in a crush. Families spent decades fighting cover-ups after Liverpool fans were initially wrongly blamed. An independent inquiry found crowd safety compromised at every level due to lack of police control. Initial inquests were quashed in 2016, leading to unlawful killing verdicts.
Note: This article was created with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
