Elkan Abrahamson, Andy Burnham and Bishop James Jones.

Q1 Chair: Welcome, everybody, to this evidence session. I am Harriet Harman. I am Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which, as its name suggests, is half Members of the House of Lords and half Members of the House of Commons from all parties. Today, we are having an evidence session to consider whether human rights were respected in the current process for conducting public inquiries and coroners’ inquests, focusing on the Hillsborough inquiry. We are considering specifically how a Hillsborough law might improve the protection of those human rights.

This inquiry will look at processes, but we all remember that at the heart of this is 97 lives tragically cut short and the continued suffering of their bereaved families. They are at the forefront of our minds as we consider these issues. Lord Alton, David Alton, was a constituency MP and a number of his constituents died in the Hillsborough disaster, so he has a very special interest and concern.

To set the scene, a number of human rights issues are engaged here. The principal one is Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to life. As everyone will know, the UK is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 2 of the European convention guarantees the right to life. It imposes on the state both negative obligations not to take life intentionally and positive obligations to protect life. The positive duty to protect life includes a duty to carry out an effective official investigation when there is reason to believe that an individual has died in circumstances in which the state or public authorities may have been at fault. That is the human rights perspective that we are bringing to this very important issue of the question of Hillsborough law.

We have two panels giving us evidence this afternoon. The first panel has three witnesses, one of whom is in the room with us and two who are giving evidence to us remotely. We have the Right Reverend James Jones KBE, who was Bishop of Liverpool between 1998 and 2013, adviser to the Home Secretary on Hillsborough, and author of the November 2017 report 'The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power'—A Report to Ensure the Pain and Suffering of the Hillsborough Families is Not Repeated. Welcome, Bishop Jones. I hope that you can hear and see us okay.

Bishop James Jones: Thank you.

Chair: I would also like to welcome from Manchester Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester. Andy was a Member of Parliament and a member of the Cabinet, and he has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. His Private Member’s Bill, the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, formed the basis of Hillsborough law. When he was in the Cabinet and a Member of Parliament, he was a persistent champion addressing the concerns arising out of Hillsborough. Welcome to you, too.

Andy Burnham: Thank you, Chair.

Chair: Welcome, too, to Elkan Abrahamson. Elkan is a solicitor at Jackson Lees and a director of Hillsborough Law Now. Elkan specialises in major public inquiries and inquests and represented 20 of the families during the Hillsborough inquest. Welcome to you, Elkan.

Elkan Abrahamson: Thank you.

Q2 Chair: I will start with a question to you, Bishop Jones. Can you remind us why you came to write the report? What prompted you to write it? Can you also give your observations on the Government’s response to your report, which we are yet to have?

Bishop James Jones: First, I chaired the Hillsborough Independent Panel and, when that led to the second inquest and the returning of a determination of unlawful killing, Theresa May was Home Secretary. She asked me if I would listen again to the families’ experiences and write a report that should ensure that the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families should never be repeated and that lessons should be learned and embedded across government. One of the phrases that leapt out to the Hillsborough Independent Panel was that what the families had endured over these years was the patronising disposition of unaccountable power. Theresa May was affected by the determination of unlawful killing and was determined that the families’ perspective should not be lost.

Chair: What about the timing the Government’s response?

Bishop James Jones: You mean the letter that has gone out about the delay?

Chair: Your report was in 2017, was it not?

Bishop James Jones: Indeed.

Chair: Have you had a formal response yet to that report from the Government?

Bishop James Jones: Not yet. The Government first said that they could not respond to my report because there were trials ongoing. Those trials have all been completed, and the Government are now in a position to respond. On 8 June this year, the Home Secretary asked me if I would chair a meeting with the families at which both she and the Lord Chancellor could speak on a families first principle about the direction of travel that the Government were intending to move in in response to my report.

After that meeting, families and others, including me, made representations to the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor. As I understand from the letter that has recently gone out to the families, this is because they are seriously considering the responses that the families shared with them on that day.

Q3 Chair: Looking again at Article 2, which says that to satisfy the requirements of keeping to Article 2 to carry out an official investigation it must be independent, capable of leading to punishment of those responsible for the death, and prompt, and it must proceed with reasonable expedition, do you think that issue has been met over the course of the Government’s response since the Hillsborough disaster in 1989?

Bishop James Jones: The families are clearly frustrated. They must speak for themselves, but as one who has listened to them I would say that they feel frustrated that 34 years on the Government have yet to respond.

In the Government’s favour, I should say that, as many of your members will know, there have been many inquiries, many panels and many recommendations that have remained on the shelf. What is significant about ‘The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power’ is that the Government are addressing the 25 points of learning. We do not yet know what their response will be, but it is significant that this report is not being shelved and that these 25 points of learning are being addressed and, we hope, as soon as possible.

Q4 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Thank you, Bishop Jones, for the introduction. I very much hope that when Andy Burnham responds to later questions he will also address this issue of delay.

It was a very famous Liverpudlian, a Prime Minister, who said that justice delayed is justice denied. As you have just said, it is 34 years since the tragedy of Hillsborough. It is nearly six years since the publication of your report. We got a letter only yesterday from the Home Secretary saying that the further delays now arise from the Government’s best intentions for securing a meaningful legacy. Although I think you have tried to give the most charitable and best interpretation on this, do you not accept that the deceits, the lies, the grief and the experiences of so many people caught up in Hillsborough have been compounded by the constant delays and, as the Chair just said, the failure and the duty to expedite and to do this promptly? Thirty-four years is too long.

Bishop James Jones: I am not here as a spokesperson for the Government. I share the families’ frustration as the author of both reports. However, as I have said on other occasions, the process has to be just in order for the outcome to be just. Clearly, there could not be a response to my report while the trials were ongoing. It is some time since the trials have concluded, but I am persuaded that the Government are seriously considering the 25 points of learning. In the end, it is only when we hear their response that we will be persuaded, but I do think that the delay that they are asking for is a genuine request in order that they can respond as much as possible to the points of learning.

Q5 Lord Dholakia: My question is to Bishop Jones. One of the main focuses of your inquiry was to look at the matter of the inquest and what was going on. As was mentioned earlier, this is to meet Article 2 of the ECHR. What problems did you identify, particularly when the state was involved in some way or the other in the deaths of people at that particular time?

Bishop James Jones: Thank you for that question, which goes to the heart of our report, the patronising disposition. On the experience of the first inquest, again the families must speak about their own reaction, but what they encountered was what people describe as the inequality of arms. In other words, they appeared at the inquest expecting to hear how and why their loved ones had died. I think over 40 of the families clubbed together to pay for one barrister, whereas the state agencies came to the court all lawyered up with lawyers and barristers to defend their own reputations. I think that was a denial of the human rights of the families not to be equally legally represented at the first inquest.

Q6 Chair: That touches on another aspect of Article 2, which is that the next of kin of the deceased must be involved in the inquiry to the extent necessary to safeguard their legitimate interests. We will look in further questions at the resources necessary to support that.

My next question is to Andy Burnham. The Private Member’s Bill that you introduced when you were an MP on the accountability of public authorities is the basis of the draft Hillsborough law. Can you highlight for the committee the key provisions in the proposed law and tell us how you think it would contribute to the protection of human rights? It was seven years ago that you brought it forward. Is it still necessary, or has it been overtaken?

Andy Burnham: I think it is extremely necessary, Chair. With every year that it is not passed, the potential for fresh injustice is there. We can see it in what happens. I could touch on the Manchester Arena inquiry issue in a moment if that would be helpful to the committee.

To go back to the core of the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, as Bishop Jones has touched on there are two core measures at the heart of it. One is a duty of candour on all public officials and police officers, and the other is the requirement for parity of legal funding that you just heard about. The question that was always in my mind following the second Hillsborough inquest—I posed this question in the House of Commons when I responded across the Floor from the then Home Secretary, Theresa May—was how an entire English city was crying injustice for 20 years, yet nobody in this place, Parliament, appeared to be listening.

A lot could be said in answer to that question, but two reasons for it are the lack of a duty of candour and the lack of parity of funding. The lack of a duty of candour in the first instance allows public authorities to create false narratives and to shift blame on to victims. That is what happens and is still happening. In particular, when those false narratives are amplified through the media, as was the case with the Hillsborough disaster, they become extremely hard to shift.

Going forward to the coronial process, what you then have is those narratives having been established and a courtroom that, as the Bishop has just said, is not a level playing field. You have public authorities spending public money like confetti hiring the best QCs in the land and, in the case of the Hillsborough families, you had families who had to scratch around even to cobble together enough money to get any form of representation.

I brought Margaret Aspinall, the former chair of the Hillsborough family support group, to Parliament in the aftermath of the second inquest. Those who were there might remember that she spoke of having to cash the cheque she had received from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in respect of her son James to pay for her legal representation. If that is not an abhorrent notion to anyone in Parliament, I honestly do not know what is. There is that ability to create those false narratives, and the core process is not set up to deal with them because one side is massively better represented than the other. That is how these injustices keep repeating and echo through the decades. You could take a long list of things. You can see echoes of Hillsborough in Grenfell.

I mentioned the Manchester Arena inquiry. I set up a voluntary, non-statutory inquiry in the immediate aftermath of the Manchester Arena bomb, under the chairmanship of Lord Kerslake. It is sad to speak of Bob today while we are all still reeling from the news of his passing. He did a phenomenal job for us in Greater Manchester in trying to get the early learning from what happened.

It is hard for me to say that in setting up that inquiry—Bishop Jones had just published his report—I said to the former leadership of Greater Manchester Police, “I want you to put the charter in place for bereaved families here and work as though it is in place”. Even having said that, Greater Manchester Police gave a false account—let me reword that; an inaccurate account—of what happened on the night to the Kerslake inquiry that was left in place for a long time until it was corrected. It was only the statutory inquiry that in the end got to the truth.

My point is that often in those voluntary inquiries there is no duty of candour. Therefore, they can be used in a way that is about taking blame away from the authorities and protecting reputations. It is a very recent example of why the Hillsborough law is needed. You could go further back from Hillsborough to contaminated blood, which is a very live issue at the moment, and to Bloody Sunday. Colleagues in the room will know that there are many more that I could add to that list. This keeps being repeated, and until there is such a law, which we would call the Hillsborough law, I do not think anybody can be certain that these injustices will not carry on occurring into the future.

Chair: That was very helpful. You are basically saying that the Government in the current situation are not complying with their Article 2 obligations to hold an effective official investigation through a coroner’s inquest because, first off, it starts with prejudicial material coming from state agencies that is not balanced by a duty of candour, and that becomes entrenched. Then, when you get to the coroner’s inquest, it is undermined again because it is built on prejudicial statements and you have an inequality in that you have whole Benches full of KCs and solicitors paid at public expense to represent state agencies, with the victims’ bereaved relatives without any funding to speak of to support them. Is that the construct of the argument? Am I getting that right?

Andy Burnham: You are very much getting it right, Chair. That is exactly what happens. It is common for bereaved families at inquests to say that they felt like they were on trial, and that can be inquests involving just one family where there are efforts to portray them as in some way reckless or irresponsible. It is a very common experience, and it happens now.

I think it is compounded by the fact that very little is set out as a requirement in respect of how coronial processes are handled. Things can happen during those processes that are very harmful to the way families feel treated in what are often courtrooms. They enter raw with grief and go into a situation where the worst kind of implications are made and questions asked, often with very little ability to stop that. It is often a retraumatising process for bereaved families.

On your point describing the process of how things happen, can I share with the committee a very recent and real example for me from my time in government? I dealt with the aftermath as Health Secretary of the publication of the Archer report, which was a voluntary report into the infected blood scandal. It reported in 2009, just before I became Health Secretary. I inherited a lot of the unhappiness about that report from victims of the contaminated blood scandal. At the time, I sent letters to those victims, prepared for me by civil servants, that included the phrase that unsafe blood was never knowingly given to haemophiliacs. From my own work since leaving office over the last decade, I have come to the view that those statements were wrong, and I believe the evidence exists in the Department of Health to be clear that those statements were wrong. I said as much at the infected blood inquiry last year.

If a Secretary of State is being given statements that are, let us say, not accurate, what hope is there about something as sensitive as this? That is why a duty of candour, to me anyway, needs to apply right across the board, right the way up to the top, if we are to stop an impulse in the system always to deflect and to push away responsibility. It costs the British state far more to do this than it does to be honest at the very start, not just in the direct costs to the Exchequer but in the human consequences of forcing people bereaved or people harmed through tragedy into the wilderness and the retraumatising effect of that. The human cost of that is incalculable, I would say.

Bishop James Jones: I endorse all that Andy has just said. On the point about the equality of arms, I will add that when it came to the second inquest it was Theresa May’s decision that the families should be legally represented, and she commissioned a senior civil servant in the Home Office to devise a bespoke system. That was Ken Sutton, who in fact had headed up the secretariat for the Hillsborough Independent Panel. A bespoke scheme was created so that the families could be legally represented. That made a huge difference.

The other thing that was significant about the second inquest is that the judge, Sir John Goldring, invited the families to draw pen portraits of their loved ones. It was not simply a number, 96 or 97, it was the people whom they loved and had lost. That had a major impact on the inquest.

Chair: Thank you. Your point is that that was a one-off situation and what the law would be aiming for is to ensure that that was entrenched.

Bishop James Jones: Exactly, Chair, because I think she gave us a model for what could happen and be put in statute.

Q7 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Welcome, Mr Abrahamson, and a tribute to you for all the work that you did in representing the families.

A fundamental principle, I think, underpinning human rights is recognition of the inherent human dignity of everyone. One of the human rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights under Article 3 is the right not to be subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment. I want to know your views on this. Were the bereaved families treated with dignity, from your experience? Did they have their rights respected in all those years following Hillsborough, particularly in the investigations and inquiries into the tragedy?

Elkan Abrahamson: Thank you. I will say first that I am not bound, either religiously or politically, to be as diplomatic as the other two speakers, so forgive me if I am intemperate.

The families from the very start were not just dealt with without dignity but were made victims in this sense. The day following the deaths newspaper headlines appeared blaming Liverpool fans for being drunk, for being violent, for trying to enter the ground without tickets. As pernicious as that was, it also had an effect on the survivors and the families, who were beginning to question themselves and ask themselves, “Were our loved ones to blame for this? Were we to blame for this?” Psychologically, that is aggressive, punitive and very damaging. In addition to the trauma of the death, you have the trauma of thinking that in some way you might be responsible for that death.

That pattern continued through the first inquests, where incidentally those who died were referred to by a number rather than by name—body number 1, body number 2, and so on—indignity heaped on indignity. No help was given to the families for travel, for instance. The inquest took place in Sheffield. Most of the families came from Liverpool and no help was provided them to get there. They were advised by police that it was not necessary for them to go, a continuing pattern of exclusion and indignity.

To combine that with a supplement to the answers you were just given about the timeliness of the Bill, I have come to you today from the end of module 1 of the Covid inquiry, where no pen portraits are allowed, incidentally, and where it is apparent that a large number of state bodies and local authority bodies are there to protect their position and to justify their actions rather than to explore in an open and honest way what went wrong in order to find out what we can do right next time.

Going back to Article 2, we are not just talking about deaths, we are talking about saving deaths, saving people from dying in future, which is also linked to Article 2, the right to life.

We also heard today that in the Post Office inquiry senior executives of the Post Office are being paid bonuses for co-operating with the inquiry; in other words, a bonus to tell the truth. It is just appalling that there is an environment that allows us to think that it is appropriate not to tell the truth. The reaction from many people to our suggestion that there should be a Hillsborough law was, “What do you mean you need a law to get people to tell the truth? Why do people not have to tell the truth anyway?” Yet they do not, and positions are adopted that are counter to the truth and to the dignity of those who died and that threaten the lives of us all.

Q8 Lord Henley: Mr Abrahamson, as a lawyer, notwithstanding the lack of the duty of candour and clarity of legal funding in the so-called inequality of arms, counsel who appear before these tribunals presumably owe some duty to the tribunal as well as to their clients. Professionally, to what extent will that mitigate against that lack of duty of candour, even though I accept that there is probably a need for a duty of candour and a need for parity of legal funding?

Elkan Abrahamson: I have a brace of KCs behind me who will no doubt correct me later in the next session.

Chair: Mr Abrahamson, if you would rather they answered that question, which is a very important—

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: No, it can be answered.

Elkan Abrahamson: I am happy to give it a shot. It is quite right that counsel have a duty not to consciously mislead an inquiry, but the word there is “consciously”. They depend on what they are being told by their clients. The fault is not with counsel; the fault is with the clients.

Lord Henley: I will put that question again later.

Q9 Joanna Cherry: Good afternoon. I wanted to ask about those terrible newspaper headlines. You explained how they had a pernicious psychological punitive effect on the families, and I think we have all heard about that over the years. Could you elaborate on that? Of course, the state is not responsible for what a newspaper says, but was there any way in which the state leapt upon those headlines or exacerbated those misleading headlines? Can you help us with that?

Elkan Abrahamson: Part of the newspaper account came from the police, who were seeking to justify their actions. Following on from that and linking that to the need for a duty of candour, some police officers were charged with perverting the course of justice because of attempts to fabricate or alter statements. The charges were kicked out at half time by the judge, because those attempts at alteration were in connection with evidence that was being given to a non-statutory inquiry where there was no duty to tell the truth. The state played a part in that and was allowed to play a part in that, and that was held to be lawful.

Joanna Cherry: Remind me, but am I correct in saying that some politicians jumped on those headlines and peddled them publicly as an excuse for what had happened?

Elkan Abrahamson: Yes, certainly at least one politician, probably more, yes.

Joanna Cherry: Can you remember who it was?

Elkan Abrahamson: I cannot off the top of my head.

Chair: What you are saying then about the duty of candour is that currently there is impunity for people to put out this version of drunkenness, violence, people without tickets, and that with a duty of candour there would be an end to that impunity, because they would have a countervailing duty to be candid about what they say?

Elkan Abrahamson: Yes, exactly.

Chair: Thank you. That is very clear.

Q10 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Bishop Jones, can we look further at your recommendations and perhaps move you on to another obligation under Article 2? Specifically, in the report, you recommended the creation of an independent public advocate. Meanwhile, you will know that the Victims and Prisoners Bill appears to act on that recommendation. Is it what you proposed? Does it go far enough? In the aftermath of these terrible tragedies, will it help to protect and to enforce people’s human rights? Having particular regard to the obligations set out in the defining article of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 2, the right to life itself, will it ensure effective investigations?

Bishop James Jones: It was not part of our 25 points of learning, but you are right that in the report I welcomed the proposal to establish an IPA. My concern about what is in the Bill before Parliament at the moment is that it does not go far enough, because it does not propose that there should be a standing independent public advocate.

My own experience and observation is that in the immediate aftermath of a public tragedy when people are disorientated, grief-stricken, bereaved, traumatised, that is the very moment when they need an independent public advocate. To wait two weeks or two months for the Secretary of State to work out whether or not the public tragedy merits an IPA overlooks the pressing need in the immediate aftermath of there being an advocate for those who have been affected.

It goes back to the duty of candour and the false narrative points that we have been looking at. With Hillsborough, it was in the immediate aftermath that the false narrative emerged about blaming the fans. If there was an IPA, one of its functions could well be to challenge any false narrative that emerged. Yes, there should be an IPA, but it needs to be a standing appointment. Otherwise, I am afraid, it is not an independent public advocate, it is just a public advocate.

Q11 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Can I quarry a little bit deeper on that? Of course, Mr Abrahamson reminded us about the false narratives before and the lack of independent advice, help and support that was being given to the people who were directly affected. The Victims and Prisoners Bill would make a key function of the independent public advocate a duty to ensure that bereaved families are informed about sources of support and advice, enabling access to documents and information connected with any inquest or inquiry. I wonder if that fully meets your own report’s recommendations, either in the direct recommendations or in the observations that you make in the report itself.

Certainly, from my own recollections, I visited every family that was directly affected by Hillsborough, including families with children who had died at Hillsborough, which for me was one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life. I could not believe the absence of any official help given to anyone at that time. Does that not demonstrate why the Government are right to do this? Will it go far enough? Does it do the things that you think are needed?

Bishop James Jones: I am entirely with you from your own experience. I think the IPA should be there to protect the human rights of those who are affected by a public tragedy. I am surprised that that is not on the face of the Bill, as far as I have read it. That is the explicit purpose of an IPA, to protect those rights.

I think, too, that what the IPA could and should do would be to instruct all agencies to keep and not to destroy any emails or documents so that they can become subject to later scrutiny. I also think that the IPA could have a role in advising the Government on setting up an appropriate inquiry or panel. It could advise on the terms of reference, having listened to the families and engaged with them, so that the inquiry or panel really did address the issues that concern the bereaved. After the event, the IPA could have a role in scrutinising whether lessons have been learned and embedded across government, because at the moment there is nobody. There is no public official who is given charge to do that.

Q12 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Finally, picking up the point you have just made about ensuring that evidence and material that is germane is not destroyed in order to cover tracks, I had written to the Sports Minister before the game sending correspondence from a constituent worried about the safety of the ground at Hillsborough. Pinning that down subsequently took a Parliamentary Question and an admission that the letter actually existed and that it had happened. I think you are saying that there should be an advocate there to ensure that nothing is suppressed, that the narrative is not changed, and that the material that would be germane to bringing out the truth and justice will not be in short supply.

Bishop James Jones: Absolutely, because what our report is saying is that there needs to be a change of culture as well as a change in the law. The change in culture is about being transparent and candid, dealing with people honestly. That is why one of the three principal points of learning in the report is a charter for those bereaved through public tragedy. One of the key principles of the charter is that you do not put protecting your own reputation over and above the rights, interests and needs of those who have suffered. Going back to that earlier discussion about candour, it is changing the culture as well as changing the law.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: Thank you so much, and thank you for all that you and our other witnesses here today have been doing. I hugely respect that.

Q13 Chair: I have one final question. In a letter yesterday on the question of responding to your report, Bishop Jones, the Home Secretary said that the Government are taking some time to consider afresh certain elements of their response and that there will be a slight delay. Have you been given any indication of how long that delay might be? Do you have any timeframe, or are we once again in infinity and no man’s land? When are you expecting it, or do you have no idea at all?

Bishop James Jones: I have been given no timeframe as to when they will, but I was in the meeting on 8 June when the Lord Chancellor and Home Secretary met with the families. The families were forthcoming with their own reactions. I could see the effect of those reactions upon both the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary, and I would be very surprised if when they do respond they do not come forward with proposals that match the aspirations of the families.

Q14 Bell Ribeiro-Addy: I have one quick question for you, Bishop Jones. By chance, it happens to be a year to the day that my colleague Ian Byrne MP, who is the Member for Liverpool West Derby—who was at the match himself aged 17—launched the Hillsborough Law Now campaign in Parliament under the banner “Many injustices, one struggle”. I know that Andy Burnham was at that meeting as well.

The meeting also heard from a number of campaigners from Hillsborough, Grenfell, the blood contamination scandal, the Covid-19 inquiry, the nuclear test veterans and, of course, you, Bishop Jones. You made a particular point about the impact of the destruction of materials. I was just wondering how you may have heard that across the number of different campaigns that were present that day and the impact of being able to change legislation to ensure that that does not happen. What impact would that have? Are there mechanisms that exist already? What would we need to pin down in this proposed Hillsborough law to ensure that that did not happen?

Bishop James Jones: The regulations that you are talking about do not yet exist, which is why we await the Government’s response very keenly. I remember very vividly that very shortly after we produced the report, ‘The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power’, Grenfell United got in touch. They had read the report and they said, "We’re going through exactly what the Hillsborough families have been through". I have had involvement, as others have, with other groups that have been affected by those who have patronised them with their power, people like the contaminated/infected blood community. I think the meeting you referred to showed the great need for the Government to respond positively to these 25 points of learning.

Andy Burnham: Chair, would you mind if I briefly made a very quick point? I would be grateful if you would allow me to do so. There is a direct consequence of the delay that I want to bring to the committee’s attention. The IOPC—the Independent Office for Police Conduct—is compiling what it calls the final report on Hillsborough. This is meant to be a comprehensive, voluminous document that summarises everything from Operation Resolve, which was the police investigation set up after the Hillsborough Independent Panel report that Bishop Jones chaired. To this point, I have not been able to get an agreement from the IOPC that it will be consistent with the families first principle outlined in Bishop Jones’s charter. It is a great worry to a number of the families that this final report will potentially be published without the families first principle, without a duty of candour, which in many ways could reopen things that the second inquest settled.

The delay could have a very real consequence for the Hillsborough families in respect of that final report. We have grave concerns about how it is being compiled and what will be in it. We believe it is essential that it is shown to the families first before any of it sees the light of day. Yet as we sit here today, that principle has not been agreed to by the IOPC. I just wanted to alert the committee to a real consequence of the delay in the response.

Chair: Thanks very much indeed. Could I very warmly thank our panel, Elkan Abrahamson, Bishop Jones and Andy Burnham? You have been exemplary in the clarity that you have given the committee in helping us in our inquiry today. Can I also say how much I respect the work all three of you have done over so many years? I hope that some good will come out of it. It turns out that it is on behalf of the committee as well, not just me. Thank you very much.