After such a catharsis as Tuesday’s verdicts of unlawful killing of the 96 victims of Hillsborough, there is a hunger for change that should be exploited before “never again” fades away, as experience suggests it surely will be. The home secretary, Theresa May, has built a reputation for being sensitive to the abuse of power by public authorities, from failure to protect children from sexual exploitation to deaths in police custody. It is notable that throughout the two long years of the Hillsborough inquest, in which both sides were state-funded, she insisted on complete equality between the families and the state agencies.
But – as Hillsborough, where the bill has topped £14m and may be heading towards £70m, also showed – holding power to account has a big price tag. It also relies on citizens having the requisite entitlements in law to demand answers, too. It is an irony indeed that legal rights that were pertinent in the Hillsborough story, which require the state properly to investigate charges that it failed in its duty to protect life, are derived from a European convention which Mrs May has this week been proposing Britain should quit. MPs unquestionably want to change the culture of public bodies, to make them accountable. It won’t happen unless they also will the resources and the legal powers to prise out the truth.
It is easy enough to pick off the public bodies that failed at the Sheffield Wednesday stadium on 15 April 1989. Evidence showed that the South Yorkshire Police Service (SYPS) set in motion an operation of deceit of chilling extent. When the DPP finally comes to consider prosecutions, they are likely to have some very serious questions to answer. But for the SYPS, there is more than Hillsborough on the charge sheet. There is a trail of failure and cover up that runs from the police charge on striking miners at Orgreave five years before Hillsborough, to the Rotherham child sex abuse that began less than 10 years after. The suspension of its chief constable, David Crompton, on Wednesday after protests about the way attacks on the conduct of the fans were renewed at the inquest may signal the birth pangs of a new era. But if SYPS is ever to rebuild the confidence of the people it serves, it will not be enough. MPs called for a public inquiry: it would be a good beginning.
Hillsborough is uniquely shocking because so many people died, so many others were treated so cruelly in the process of establishing the truth, and the lies were sustained so ruthlessly for so long. But as the home secretary acknowledged in the Commons, the behaviour of the SYPS was merely at the extreme end of the spectrum of normal behaviour for public bodies under threat. The default position for the police, but also the prison service, and too often the NHS when facing allegations of grave misconduct, is denial. The demand for cultural transformation that would replace defensiveness with a genuine accountability has often been heard before. But we may now have a model of how it could work.
The second Hillsborough inquest was an example of how a properly resourced inquest can drive secrets out into the open. It was long and agonising for families. But the end product was a watertight result that gave the families the total vindication for which they had waited so long. Thanks to the campaigning efforts of the charity Inquest, it is now standard practice for most inquests investigating deaths involving a state agency to have the power to deliver a verdict that allows the jury to provide a commentary. It makes the public body – police, prison service or NHS trust – explain their actions.
But an inquest is only as good as the coroner and the legal representation of the parties involved. Recent reforms were designed to keep costs down, and off the Ministry of Justice’s books. The quality of coroners is patchy; and while the state agency has public funding, families only get legal aid if they meet very narrow criteria. Without what campaigners call equality of arms, these inquests can be no better than their predecessors. With it, they are likely to be longer and more expensive. If the promise of “never again” made by so many MPs in Wednesday’s sombre debate is to mean anything, then they must start by accepting that the cost of curbing what has been called the arrogance of unaccountable power is far outweighed by its value.
