Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)

My Lords, I warmly welcome this Bill and congratulate the Government as a whole and Sir Keir Starmer for bringing it forward, albeit in a belated way. But it is very welcome that it is here. I have been incredibly moved by the power and the perception of every speaker. They have brought their own knowledge and experience to this debate. I think I am right in saying that I am the only Member of your Lordships’ House who was present at Hillsborough on that day in April 1989. I witnessed from the main stand the horrific events as they unfolded and saw the scores of casualties being brought out from the Leppings Lane end of the stadium and laid on the pitch. I do not think anyone in the ground fully appreciated—I certainly did not—the scale of the catastrophe that had taken place. Neither were we able to guess just how long it would take for the truth finally to emerge, a process made immeasurably harder by the obstructive attitude of several police forces, particularly South Yorkshire Police. For many years it attempted to put the blame for the disaster falsely on the Liverpool fans, claiming that it had been caused by hooligans fuelled by drink. As the noble Baroness, Lady May, said in her powerful speech, that lie started on the day of the disaster itself and persisted for years and years later. As early as August 1989, Lord Justice Taylor had published his interim report, setting out his findings on the causes of the disaster. It was highly critical of the police operation and of some of the senior officers in the South Yorkshire force responsible for the policing of the match. It concluded that “the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control”. Lord Justice Taylor also addressed allegations about supporter behaviour that had appeared in some earlier media coverage, making it clear that, in his view, the actions of supporters played no part in the disaster. This was followed by the setting up of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, referred to in this debate, chaired by the right reverend James Jones, then the Bishop of Liverpool. That reported on 12 September 2012. I wish to draw the House’s attention to one particular finding: “The Panel recommends that police force records are brought under legislative control and that police forces are added to Part II of the First Schedule to the Public Records Act 1958, thereby making them subject to the supervision of the Keeper of Public Records”. I strongly support that recommendation. Back in 2012, and indeed still today, police records, as far as England and Wales are concerned, though not in Scotland and Northern Ireland, remain at the disposal of each force’s chief constable and the police are unaccountable for their records. A stark example of what that could mean was contained in a further report from Bishop James, The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power, published in 2017 and referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. One family member of a Hillsborough victim reported that: “I had a telephone call from the then South Yorkshire Chief Constable Med Hughes in the stages before the HIP was set up in 2009. During the call he said ‘I am under no obligation to disclose anything and the papers belong to me. If I wanted to I could take them into the yard and have a bonfire with them’”. Shortly after the panel reported, the Archives & Records Association took up the mantle of campaigning on police records. Writing to me in advance of this legislation and debate, it said: “So far it has been a frustrating failure and a sad example of how the establishment closes ranks. The police have managed to play a long game and maintain the support of Home Office civil servants and whichever party has been in power to ensure that they continue to do as they please with their own records”. This recommendation on police records was later endorsed in July 2016 in a letter to the then Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, from the shadow Home Secretary, Andy Burnham MP. He described it as: “Vitally important. It was accidental access to police records that enabled researchers and the families of the Hillsborough victims to uncover the extent of alleged attempts by police officers to manipulate investigations into the disaster … future researchers must have a guaranteed right to access the maximum range of police records and the police themselves must be obliged to preserve their records for public accountability purposes”. Mr Burnham now has a new job, and I hope that he will use his authority as Prime Minister to cut through the prevarication and delay which has beset officials in handling this disgraceful sequence of events for years and achieve in government what he so courageously called for in opposition. The Public Records Act is the standard that the rest of the public sector, including the Civil Service, already operates. The infrastructure is already there. We have established recognised places of deposit for public records across England and Wales, and many police forces already archive their records in these and have an existing relationship with their local authority’s archive service. Adding police records to Schedule 2 would oblige forces and officials to move much more quickly, and chief constables would have to accept that the records their forces create and hold are public records, not their corporate or personal property. I hope very much that my noble friend, when he replies to this debate, will say that the Government are considering this and that when I move an amendment to this effect in Committee, he will take a sympathetic view of it.