Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)

It is an honour and privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, who has been a stalwart supporter and advocate for the Hillsborough families, right from the time the disaster occurred. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, to the Front Bench. We are lucky to have him in dealing with a Bill like this. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Levitt, who put in a huge amount of work in relation to the Bill before the Recess. I also pay a very profound tribute to the Hillsborough families. It is because of the Hillsborough families, and only because of them and the experience of the people who suffered at Hillsborough, that the Bill is here. It is an incredibly important Bill. It represents a fundamental shift whereby the Government and public authorities pay a price for not just a cover-up but deliberately not helping people who have the misfortune to suffer, as the Horizon postmasters and the Hillsborough families have, and as the people with infected blood have. Test the Bill by reference to what happened in Hillsborough. The disaster was caused by a catastrophic act of negligence by the police. As the noble Baroness, Lady May, said, the very afternoon they had done that, they spread lies to the media to try to deflect blame from themselves. The former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, identified in his initial report that it was a catastrophic failure by the police, but that was obscured in the inquest that followed. At that inquest the public sector and in particular the police were heavily represented. The Hillsborough families who travelled from Liverpool across the Pennines to Sheffield every day that it went on—and it went on for weeks—were grotesquely underrepresented. The law is fine; it is open to all, just like the Savoy, as long as you can afford it. This Bill deals with three of those aspects. First, on the duty of candour, it would not have been open to the South Yorkshire Police to keep all their records. They would have been obliged to reveal the documents in which they were co-ordinating the statements that the police gave to bring colour to the entirely false allegation that the fans had brought it on themselves. The duty of candour deals with that. Secondly, the crime of misleading the public in a serious manner, which is also in the Bill, would have prevented South Yorkshire Police disseminating a false narrative to distract attention from what it had done. Thirdly, parity of representation at an inquest would have ensured that that depressing trek across the Pennines to the first inquest, where the coroner was bamboozled into coming to the wrong conclusion, would not so easily have happened. In looking at the Bill, we should test it against whether it achieves that which is necessary to ensure that Hillsborough and infected blood do not happen again. Remember, the infected blood scandal was state bodies deliberately allowing harm to be done to a whole range of children because those bodies made judgments—that those children were no part of—as to the cheapest way to get blood. It is a terrible story. I have the following concerns about the Bill maybe not achieving what it is supposed to achieve. First, what is the scope of the duty of candour? Is it that, for example, the police would have to have admitted almost straightaway that they were making up a false narrative? It should be clear that admission of wrongdoing is a vital part of the duty of candour; I am not sure it says that at the moment. Secondly, the crime of misleading the public in the way that the police do kicks in only when there is “harm” to individuals, defined as “physical harm, psychological harm … and economic loss”, which is not general enough. I do not want to discover that that crime would not have applied to the false narrative put into the media by South Yorkshire Police because no individual harm could be identified. It was all about protecting their own reputations, and therefore harm is not applied. Thirdly, on the issue of representation at inquests, a provision in the Bill says that where there is a public body engaged in an inquest into how a person’s loved one has died, they are entitled to legal aid in relation to it. Is that enough to ensure parity? Anybody who has been to inquests where a whole range of public bodies are engaged has seen KCs, QCs, BCs and bars for all the public bodies and maybe one person representing the family. I am not sure what the right answer to that is, but there needs to be proper parity. My final point is on the issue of public authorities, which I am sure will take this seriously. The person who has the obligation is the head of the public authority. How do we ensure that people such as the chief constable of South Yorkshire Police when the cover-up was happening absolutely feel it? In the States, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act made the individual carry the can. We might look at the question of whether the individual at the top of the organisation carries the can. He or she has to have a defence if they did absolutely everything they could and did not cause harm intentionally, but the way to deal with it is through the person at the top having individual responsibility. I strongly welcome this really important Bill, and I hope we can make it better.