To those that disparage 'Conspiracy Theorists'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-camerons-hillsborough-statement-in-full-8130555.html

"Today the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Reverend James Jones, is publishing the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel.

The disaster at the Hillsborough football stadium on 15th April 1989 was one of the greatest peacetime tragedies of the last century.

96 people died as a result of a crush in the Leppings Lane Terrace at the FA Cup Semi-Final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

There was a public Inquiry at the time by Lord Justice Taylor which found - and I quote - that the main cause of the disaster was "a failure of police control".

But the Inquiry didn't have access to all the documents that have since become available, it didn't properly examine the response of the emergency services, it was followed by a deeply controversial inquest, and by a media version of events that sought to blame the fans.

As a result, the families have not heard the truth and have not found justice.

That is why the previous government - and in particular - the Rt Hon Member for Leigh was right to set up this Panel.

And it is why this government insisted that no stone should be left unturned and that all papers should be made available to the Bishop of Liverpool and his team.

Mr Speaker, in total over 450,000 pages of evidence have been reviewed.

It was right that the families should see the Report first.

As a result the government has only had a very limited amount of time to study the evidence so far.

But it is already very clear that many of the report's findings are deeply distressing.

There are three areas in particular.

The failure of the authorities to help protect people.

The attempt to blame the fans.

And the doubt cast on the original Coroner's Inquest.

Let me take each in turn.

FINDINGS: FAILURE OF THE AUTHORITIES

First, there is new evidence about how the authorities failed.

There is a trail of new documents which show the extent to which the safety of the crowd at Hillsborough was "compromised at every level".

The ground failed to meet minimum standards and the "deficiencies were well known".

The turnstiles were inadequate.

The ground capacity had been significantly over-calculated.

The crush barriers failed to meet safety standards.

There had been a crush at exactly the same match the year before.

And today's report shows clearly that lessons had not been learnt.

The report backs up again the key finding of the Taylor Report on police failure.

But it goes further by revealing for the first time the shortcomings of the ambulance and emergency services response.

The major incident plan was not fully implemented.

Rescue attempts were held back by failures of leadership and co-ordination.

And, significantly, new documents today show there was a delay from the emergency services when people were being crushed and killed.

FINDINGS: ATTEMPT TO BLAME THE FANS

Second, the families have long believed that some of the authorities attempted to create a completely unjust account of events that sought to blame the fans for what happened.

Mr Speaker, the families were right.

The evidence in today's report includes briefings to the media, and attempts by the Police to change the record of events.

On the media. Several newspapers reported false allegations that fans were drunk and violent and stole from the dead.

The Sun's report sensationalised these allegations under a banner headline "The Truth."

This was clearly wrong and caused huge offence, distress and hurt.

News International has co-operated with the Panel and, for the first time, today's report reveals that the source for these despicable untruths was a Sheffield news agency reporting conversations with South Yorkshire Police and Irvine Patnick, the then MP for Sheffield Hallam.

The Report finds that this was part of police efforts - and I quote - "to develop and publicise a version of events that focused on - allegations of drunkenness, ticketlessness and violence."

In terms of changing the record of events, we already know that police reports were significantly altered but the full extent was not drawn to Lord Justice Taylor's attention.

Today's Report finds that 164 statements were significantly amended - and 116 explicitly removed negative comments about the policing operation - including its lack of leadership.

The report also makes important findings about particular actions taken by the police and coroner while investigating the deaths.

There is new evidence which shows that police officers carried out police national computer checks on those who had died in an attempt - and I quote from the report - "to impugn the reputations of the deceased".

The Coroner took blood alcohol levels from all of the deceased including children.

The Panel finds no rationale whatsoever for what it regards as an "exceptional" decision.

The report states clearly that the attempt of the inquest to draw a link between blood alcohol and late arrival was "fundamentally flawed".

And that alcohol consumption was "unremarkable and not exceptional for a social or leisure occasion".

Mr Speaker, over all these years questions have been raised about the role of the government - including whether it did enough to uncover the truth.

It is certainly true that some of the language in the government papers published today was insensitive.

But having been through every document - and every government document including Cabinet Minutes will be published - the Panel found no evidence of any government trying to conceal the truth.

At the time of the Taylor Report the then Prime Minister was briefed by her private secretary that the defensive and - I quote - "close to deceitful" behaviour of senior South Yorkshire officers was "depressingly familiar."

And it is clear that the then government thought it right that the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire should resign.

But as the Rt Hon Member for Leigh has rightly highlighted, governments then and since have simply not done enough to challenge publicly the unjust and untrue narrative that sought to blame the fans.

FINDINGS: ORIGINAL CORONER'S INQUEST

Third, and perhaps most significantly of all, the Bishop of Liverpool's report presents new evidence which casts significant doubt over the adequacy of the original Inquest.

The Coroner - on the advice of pathologists - believed that victims suffered traumatic asphyxia leading to unconsciousness within seconds and death within a few minutes.

As a result he asserted that beyond 3.15pm there were no actions that could have changed the fate of the victims and he limited the scope of the Inquest accordingly.

But by analysing post mortem reports the Panel have found that 28 did not have obstruction of blood circulation and 31 had evidence of heart and lungs continuing to function after the crush.

This means that individuals in those groups could have had potentially reversible asphyxia beyond 3.15pm in contrast to the findings of the Coroner and a subsequent Judicial Review.

And the Panel states clearly that "it is highly likely that what happened to those individuals after 3.15pm was significant" in determining whether they died.

RESPONSE

Mr Speaker, the conclusions of this report will be harrowing for many of the families affected.

Anyone who has lost a child knows the pain never leaves you.

But to read a report years afterwards that says - and I quote, "a swifter, more appropriate, better focused and properly equipped response had the potential to save more lives", can only add to the pain

It is for the Attorney General to decide whether to apply to the High Court to quash the original inquest and seek a new one.

In this capacity he acts independently of government. And he will need to examine the evidence himself.

But it is clear to me that the new evidence in today's report raises vital questions which must be examined.

And the Attorney General has assured me that he will examine this new evidence immediately and reach a decision as fast as possible.

But ultimately it is for the High Court to decide.

It is also right that the House should have an opportunity to debate the issues raised in this report fully.

My Rt Hon Friend the Home Secretary will be taking forward a debate in Government time. And this will happen when the House returns in October.

APOLOGY

Mr Speaker, I want to be very clear about the view the government takes about these findings and why after 23 years this matters so much, not just for the families but for Liverpool and for our country as a whole.

Mr Speaker what happened that day - and since - was wrong.

It was wrong that the responsible authorities knew Hillsborough did not meet minimum safety standards and yet still allowed the match to go ahead.

It was wrong that the families have had to wait for so long - and fight so hard - just to get to the truth.

And it was wrong that the police changed the records of what happened and tried to blame the fans.

We ask the police to do difficult and often very dangerous things on our behalf.

And South Yorkshire Police is a very different organisation today from what it was then.

But we do the many, many honourable police men and women a great disservice if we try to defend the indefensible.

It was also wrong that neither Lord Justice Taylor nor the Coroner looked properly at the response of the other emergency services.

Again, these are dedicated people who do extraordinary things to serve the public.

But the evidence from today's report makes very difficult reading.

Mr Speaker, with the weight of the new evidence in this Report, it is right for me today as Prime Minister to make a proper apology to the families of the 96 for all they have suffered over the past 23 years.

Indeed, the new evidence that we are presented with today makes clear that these families have suffered a double injustice.

The injustice of the appalling events - the failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth.

And the injustice of the denigration of the deceased - that they were somehow at fault for their own deaths.

On behalf of the Government - and indeed our country - I am profoundly sorry for this double injustice that has been left uncorrected for so long.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR MERSEYSIDE AND THE COUNTRY

Mr Speaker, because of what I have described as the second injustice - the false version of events - not enough people in this country understand what the people of Merseyside have been through.

This appalling death toll of so many loved ones lost was compounded by an attempt to blame the victims.

A narrative about hooliganism on that day was created which led many in the country to accept that it was somehow a grey area.

Today's report is black and white.

The Liverpool fans "were not the cause of the disaster".

The Panel has quite simply found "no evidence" in support of allegations of "exceptional levels of drunkenness, ticketlessness or violence among Liverpool fans", "no evidence that fans had conspired to arrive late at the stadium" and "no evidence that they stole from the dead and dying."

Mr Speaker, I'm sure the whole House will want to thank the Bishop of Liverpool and his Panel for all the work they have done.

And I am sure that all sides will join with me in paying tribute to the incredible strength and dignity of the Hillsborough families and the community which has backed them in their long search for justice.

While nothing can ever bring back those who have been lost with all the documents revealed and nothing held back the families, at last, have access to the truth.

And I commend this Statement to the House."

Duncanmac - do you think Maggie and Rupert colluded in the cover up? I think they did.

tabs wrote:and may I just add it makes Kate McCann ( a scouser should we forget) choosing the sun or the news of the world to serialize her 'book' all the more shocking

no-one in Liverpool with any morals would touch those 'papers' with a barge pole

who remembers the headline 'Hillsborough - the truth'

if they had any shame tomorrow's sun headline would read ' the truth - WE LIED and disgraced the memories of decent people'

and don't tell me Kate wasn't old enough to remember

she was and we do

When the Sun came out with the story about Liverpool fans being drunk and unruly, underneath a headline 'The Truth,' the reaction on Merseyside was one of complete outrage. Newsagents stopped stocking the Sun. People wouldn't mention its name. They were burning copies of it. Anyone representing the Sun was abused. Sun reporters and photographers would lie, telling people they worked for the Liverpool Post and Echo. There was a lot of harassment of them because of what had been written. The Star had gone a bit strong as well but they apologised the next day. They knew the story had no foundation. Kelvin MacKenzie, the Sun's editor, even called me up.

"How can we correct the situation?" he said.

"You know that big headline – 'The Truth',"; I replied. "All you have to do is put 'We lied' in the same size. Then you might be all right."

Mackenzie said: "I cannot do that."

"Well," I replied, "I cannot help you then."

That was it. I put the phone down. Merseysiders were outraged by the Sun. A great many still are.

Masters of cover-up: How the Establishment closes ranks to protect its own and deny the people the truth
By STEPHEN GLOVER
PUBLISHED: 23:14, 14 September 2012 | UPDATED: 11:14, 15 September 2012
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All his life, STEPHEN GLOVER has believed in Britain’s great institutions. No more. The sad lesson of Hillsborough is how the Establishment — judges, police chiefs, civil servants — closes ranks to protect its own and deny the people the truth
Cover-up, lies, obfuscation and incompetence: these are the defects in the police and ambulance service revealed by this week’s damning report into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in which 96 people died.
It has taken 23 long years to establish the shaming truth, which is that senior police officers manipulated evidence to hide police failings while attempting, with great success, to blacken the good name of the innocent people who needlessly perished.
Evil is a strong word, but some of the things the top brass of South Yorkshire Police are alleged to have done — the doctoring of 116 statements to remove criticisms of the force; the imputation of excessive alcohol consumption where none had taken place — would appear to warrant such a description.

Justice? Demands for the prosecution of police chiefs who lied about the Hillsborough disaster have intensified
Prosecutions and civil actions will doubtless follow as some of the guilty are finally brought to justice, and there will surely have to be a new inquest. At last everyone seems to be united in condemning the authorities.
Senior police officers and politicians beat their breasts. David Crompton, current chief constable of South Yorkshire Police, tells us his force is in a ‘very different place in 2012’, the implication being that what has happened could never happen again because the police have changed.
But couldn’t it? Have they? I wish I could believe it. Alas, I don’t. Hillsborough has been a classic institutional cover-up which has only been brought to our notice because of the heroic persistence of the relatives of those who died. The Establishment mindset — to hide wrong-doing and ineptitude and never say sorry until it is too late — has not altered.
As a young journalist I believed in the integrity and good sense of most of our institutions. Of course, there were bad apples and stupid mistakes, but there were enough good and honest people in charge to come clean and own up when things went badly wrong.

Change? South Yorkshire Police chief David Crompton has said his force is in a 'very different place in 2012'
After a succession of scandals over recent years, it grieves me to say that I no longer believe this is true, and I don’t suppose it ever was. One episode after another has revealed a familiar and melancholy pattern of skulduggery and concealment.
Nearly all the institutions which I was taught to revere as a child have turned out to be self-serving, incompetent or dishonest — the police, Parliament, the Church, the civil service, government, the City and, I regret to say, some parts of the Press.
A dear and distinguished friend of mine blames the relentless media for hollowing out one institution after another, and lowering them in the public esteem. I’m afraid he’s wrong. The media have simply shone lights where they used not to be shone, and illuminated practices which all of us had hoped did not exist.
In a way, the most shocking thing about Hillsborough is that no one is really very surprised. The police have lost much of the respect they used to command. I was certainly brought up to trust them, and can remember throwing aside in disgust a book by George Orwell in which he doubted the decency of the police.
But maybe he was right. Of course, there are many brave and conscientious police officers. It’s their bosses I worry about — people like the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair, who tried to block an independent inquiry into the shooting in cold blood by one of his officers of the young Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005.
Look at Parliament. When I was a boy, I believed there were few more honourable letters to have after your name than MP. Even when I was in the Commons press gallery 30 years ago I still looked up to parliamentarians, though I was beginning to learn they did not always tell the truth. That was long before the more recent MPs’ expenses scandal.
Of course many MPs were innocent of any fiddling, but just as many weren’t. In fact, 389 of them — more than half the Commons — were asked to pay back money to the taxpayer amounting to more than £1 million.


Cover-up: Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair tried to block an independent inquiry into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes
A hard core were straightforward crooks, and three MPs (and two peers) went to prison. But the majority were simply greedy, claiming for items they should have purchased themselves. It was depressing that some of the miscreants were privileged and supposedly gentlemanly Tory MPs who should have known better.
Have things improved? I’m not at all convinced they have. Recent figures show that in 2011/12 MPs’ expenses rose 26  per cent to £89.4 million, which is close to pre-scandal levels. First-class rail travel, supposed to be exceptional, is again becoming the norm. Fifty MPs have even been allowed to claim for expensive iPads. Why?

As with the police over Hillsborough, endemic wrong-doing among MPs remained secret for many years, and was ultimately exposed as a result of the efforts of outsiders, in this case the Press.
But it’s not just the institutions of the State that have let us down. As the son of a clergyman, I was brought up to believe that, come what may, the Church could be trusted. How wrong I was, and how saddened my father would have been to read about the cover-up of hundreds of paedophile cases in the Roman Catholic Church.
His own Church of England has also betrayed its congregations, albeit on a smaller scale. A recent internal report into the Diocese of Chichester disclosed a familiar picture of senior clergy being slow to act in sexual abuse cases, putting the Church’s reputation before the interests of children and their families. If you can’t trust a priest, whom can you trust?

Disgraced: Fred Goodwin showed recklessness and greed when he was Chief Executive of RBS
Then there are the bankers. Some of them, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland’s disgraced former chief executive Fred Goodwin, showed recklessness and greed while behaving as if the banks were their own private property. Here it is hard to believe that their predecessors of 50 years ago were as rapacious and blindly egotistical.
Most of all, we have been disheartened by the lies and evasions of government. I believe that Tony Blair manipulated the evidence in taking this country to war against Iraq. It is perfectly true that most observers thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. What Blair did was to exaggerate the potency of weapons that turned out in any case to be fictitious.
His response to the growing case against him was a classic Establishment ruse — to appoint a friendly judge, in this instance Lord Hutton, and give him a narrow brief. Nine times out of ten a judge-led inquiry will obligingly come up with findings which suit the government of the day.
That was the case with Lord Hutton, though his implausible exoneration of Mr Blair may possibly be reversed by Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry, which has yet to deliver its verdict. This is being impeded by the Coalition’s refusal to allow it to publish relevant Cabinet papers. As ever, the Whitehall mandarins who stand behind every government live in fear of openness and candour.
The repeated failures of judge-led inquiries implicate the judiciary in the secretiveness that disfigures so many of our institutions. Another example is the clean bill of health Lord Chief Justice Widgery handed out to the Army after the ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre in Londonderry in 1972.
It took nearly 30 years for the full truth to emerge after a further — and absurdly prolonged — inquiry. Lord Savile judged that the Army overreacted and lost control, and in all probability had fired the first shot.
Despite this finding, I should say that the Armed Forces remain for me one of our few national institutions not to be tarnished by secretive double-dealing and cover-ups. In clinging to this view I hope I am not being simple-minded.

Hope: The Armed Forces remain of our few national institutions not to be tarnished by cover-ups
Hillsborough itself offers further proof of the inadequacy of judge-led inquiries. We should probably not be too critical of Lord Justice Taylor’s initial investigation since he was not given full access to the thousands of documents examined by the independent panel which has come up with the withering report about the South Yorkshire Police.
Nonetheless, the Taylor Inquiry was far from grasping of the extent either of police incompetence at Hillsborough or of the subsequent mendacity. So was a subsequent report produced by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith in 1998.
In fact, it has taken the independent panel, chaired not by a judge but by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones, to get at the truth of what really happened. Among the nine members on the panel there wasn’t a single judge and only one lawyer. Most unusually, there were two journalists, one of whom has experience of investigative journalism.
Isn’t there a lesson here? Judges are Establishment figures who seem generally loath to produce reports critical of government or state institutions, which is doubtless why governments are so eager to appoint them.
Let’s hope that Lord Justice Leveson, who is currently writing a report into media ethics, shows he is a free spirit rather than an official stooge. I say that as someone who condemns the News Of The World’s phone-hacking, as well as The Sun’s egregious misreporting in 1989 of what happened at Hillsborough.

Free spirit or official stooge? Lord Justice Leveson is currently writing his report into media ethics
But in a country beset with secretive and sometimes dysfunctional institutions, we surely need a free and independent Press that dares to expose their shortcomings, as happened in the case of MPs’ expenses.
The all-important question is why our institutions should behave in this way and resist being accountable. My tentative suggestion is that they have been reluctant to adapt to the democratic age. They retain a conviction that they know what is best for us.
There is a sense in which politicians, the police and the civil service still regard us almost as serfs with limited rights. The NHS offers a good example. Its intentions are entirely benevolent but it can also be high-handed and inefficient. Patients are often treated with indifference, and sometimes with contempt.
The police and ambulance service at Hillsborough were supposed to be serving the best interests of the fans, but as a result of incompetence only let them down. Then they strove to cover up their mistakes without consideration for those who had died or their relatives.
What they had not counted on was the endurance and hunger for justice of the families of the victims. I am speaking of brave hearts such as Trevor Hicks, chairman of the Hillsborough Families Support Group, who lost two daughters in the tragedy. Year after year he and others like him campaigned for a terrible wrong to be recognised, only to be rewarded with insults, indifference and stone-walling.

Apology: Police chief Sir Norman Bettison said he was sorry after previously saying that he believed fans were partly to blame for the Hillsborough disaster
One of the most moving responses to the report came from Becky Shah, whose mother died at Hillsborough. She said: ‘I have mixed feelings. I am relieved that Liverpool fans, survivors and the dead have been exonerated, and the city of Liverpool, too. But I was a young woman of 17, who lost her only parent at Hillsborough, and the fact that it has taken more than half of my life to get justice is absolutely outrageous in a democratic society.’
She’s right, of course. It is outrageous. But it is also inspiring that ordinary families should have taken on the authorities in the direst of circumstances and, with the help of some good and brave people, finally prevailed.
There’s good cause to be disenchanted by the way the police and so many of our other institutions cover up their mistakes and wrong-doing. I’m certainly not naive enough to believe that the wall-to-wall apologies mean that something like this can’t happen again.
But the strength and determination of the families on behalf of those they love does give me some hope. It is a kind of victory. And maybe, just maybe, the people who oversee our self-serving institutions will begin to hear the message that the people have had enough


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