Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): I have heard some specious arguments in this place I hope that the Lords amendment is acceptable to Government Members and the Minister. It is explicit that the inquiry should not begin until the Attorney General determines that it would not be prejudicial to any ongoing relevant criminal investigations or court cases. To oppose the amendment is therefore tantamount to admitting that the Government are no longer committed to an investigation into corruption between news organisations and the police, and that they are not prepared to investigate how allegations of corruption are dealt with. If the Government block Lords amendment 24 today, the public really can have no option but to draw the conclusion that this Government have no commitment to asking the important and hard questions of our national institutions I now turn to Lords amendment 96, with consequential amendment 302, which was proposed in the other place by Lord Rosser. The purpose of the amendment is to establish the principle of parity of legal funding for bereaved families at inquests involving the police. Many hon. Members have championed this cause, including during the passage of the Bill. I pay particular tribute to the tireless campaigning and personal commitment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). Unequal funding at inquests and the injustice associated with that was highlighted by the sorry saga of the Hillsborough hearings. The scales of justice were weighted against the families of those who had lost their lives. Public money was used not to discover the truth, but instead to defend an untenable narrative perpetuated by South Yorkshire police. The coroner dealing with the first pre-inquest hearings into the 21 victims of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings backed and commended applications for their bereaved families to get legal funding for proper representation, but did not have the power to authorise the funds Fees in major cases have attracted considerable public interest, but inquests at which the police are legally represented are not confined to major tragedies such as Hillsborough; far more common are inquests into the deaths of individuals who are little known. Many bereaved families can find themselves in an adversarial and aggressive environment when they go to an inquest. Many are not in a position to match the spending of the police or other parts of the public sector for their own legal representation. In fact, bereaved families have to try, if at all possible, to find their own money to have any sort of legal representation. Opposition Members believe that the overwhelming public interest lies in these inquiries discovering the truth. It follows that public money should be there to establish the truth, not just to protect public institutions, and that must mean equal funding In the other place, the Government accepted that many would sympathise with the intention of the amendment. When she was Home Secretary, the Prime Minister commissioned the former Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, to compile a report on the experiences of the Hillsborough families. We are encouraged to wait for his report before considering the issues further, yet we already know that a system of unequal funding at inquests is wrong. Public funds are used to deny justice and hide the truth. The Government need to act now to change a process that appears to be geared more towards trying to grind down bereaved families than enabling them to get at the truth. The Government really should accept the amendment.