Make-up of panel to look into Hillsborough tragedy announced

Posted Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by theguardian.com

Make-up of panel to look into Hillsborough tragedy announced
Seven panel members will scrutinise documents relating to the Hillsborough tragedy.

The government has announced the make-up of the panel that will next month begin making public key secret documents relating to the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989 and compiling a new report that will tell the "full story" of the disaster.

Shortly after the 20th anniversary of the disaster in April last year, the government responded to pressure from the families of the 96 Liverpool fans who died by promising to make key documents from the police, fire and ambulance services, the coroner, the government and Sheffield city council available for the first time.

It was revealed today that the panel, chaired by the Right Rev James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, will meet in Liverpool on 4 February for the first of a series of monthly meetings and will be required to produce a report that not only explains its work but "will also illustrate how the information disclosed adds to public understanding of the tragedy and its aftermath".

It is understood that even those documents that cannot be made public for legal reasons will be considered by the panel and inform the final report.

The seven members of the Hillsborough Independent Panel are: public information expert Christine Gifford; TV producer and researcher Katy Jones; Paul Leighton, former deputy chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland; academic criminologist Professor Phil Scraton; Dr Bill Kirkup, former associate medical director at the Department of Health; broadcaster Peter Sissons; and archivist Sarah Tyacke.

Prof Scraton, who was previously director of the Hillsborough Project and has written two books on the subject, said the move was "a clear recognition that the families and survivors have had neither the full story nor appropriate acknowledgement of the circumstances in which 96 men, women and children died and hundreds were injured".

He added: "It confirms their resilience and courage in pursuing full disclosure of the context, circumstances and aftermath of an avoidable tragedy in the face of hostile opposition and it represents an unprecedented development in setting new standards regarding the wider public interest."

Jones, who has worked on a series of lauded drama documentaries including Jimmy McGovern's Hillsborough, said: "It is hugely important that the Hillsborough families will at last have access to all of the information surrounding this tragedy. Opening up the archive will, I hope, help to heal the pain of not knowing."

The Hillsborough Independent Panel is expected to take two years to sift through the reams of evidence, and its terms of reference were established last month. Its role is to oversee public disclosure of the documents, letting the victims' families know their content first.

However, some documents will continue to be withheld for legal reasons. The terms of reference state: "The fundamental principles will be full disclosure and no redaction of content, except in the limited legal and other circumstances outlined in the protocol."

As such, documents subject to "legal professional privilege" will not be made public and the names of junior officials and police officers up to and including the rank of sergeant will have their names redacted, as will members of the public.

The release of government papers relating to the views of ministers in the previous Tory government will require the approval of representatives of that administration before they can be released.

South Yorkshire police, principally blamed for the disaster by Lord Justice Taylor in his official report, have agreed to make public the documents they hold in around 200 storage boxes.

The other public bodies releasing their records include Sheffield city council, criticised by Taylor for failing to certify that Hillsborough was safe, and West Midlands police, who investigated the disaster for Taylor and the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The decision of the coroner, Dr Stefan Popper, to impose a 3.15pm cut-off time on his inquest into the causes of death angered many families of the deceased, who argued that it prevented a full analysis of the response by police and other emergency services.

Today's announcement was welcomed by bereaved relatives. Hillsborough Family Support Group chair Margaret Aspinall, who lost her son 18-year-old son James in the disaster, said: "We welcome the Panel which has the confidence of all interested parties and is felt capable of executing this very important task. We look forward to working with them over the coming months and hope that the outcome is satisfactory."

The campaign for the documents to be released was last year taken up by Andy Burnham, now the health secretary, and Maria Eagle, the junior justice minister, who consistently accused South Yorkshire police of "a conspiracy to cover up" its own culpability for the disaster by presenting a case that supporters' misbehaviour was to blame.