Hillsborough: Collapse of Trials — House of Commons, 2021-06-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I pay tribute to her for the consistent work that she continues to do in this area. She has asked a number of questions, and she will perhaps forgive me if I cannot answer them with absolute specificity, but I will do my very best. I will start by reiterating the apology that David Cameron made. That is the Government’s position—no ifs, no buts With regard to the prosecution, clearly, it was right for the case to be brought and, as I have said, as Lord Chancellor, I have to respect the process. However, that has had quite a consequence for the families The important work that now needs to be done by colleagues in the Home Office—I have taken the trouble to speak to Home Office officials this morning—is to focus on Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report and work with the families to ensure that those recommendations are carried out. The focus has to be unrelenting, and I want this to take months, not years. Obviously, the families need to be at the heart of it—"nothing about them without them" clearly has to be the watchword—and I am confident, in the light of the work done by David Cameron, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and now by the Home Office, that that approach will very much be taken In regard to the work that the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and others, including Lord Wills, have been doing on the independent public advocate, I want to assure the hon. Lady that we are absolutely committed to ensuring that bereaved people are supported and given a proper voice throughout the process. A Government consultation was conducted in 2018, and the responses to it were rather varied. I propose to do some more work on that process more swiftly, and to bottom-out what the options might be in ensuring that any service is independent, has the confidence of those who use it and makes a difference, particularly in major public inquiries where many lives have been lost. I know that that has been the focus. I will work with the hon. Lady to ensure that the consultation will look at what the threshold might look like and at the overall impact. I do not think we need to create some huge public body; I know that that is not the hon. Lady’s intention. I now want to give this careful and close attention, and I am sure she will work with me on that It is good to note that a lot of work has already been done with regard to legal aid eligibility. We have, in effect, ended any means test on legal aid for legal help and, indeed, representation by the use of the exceptional cases funding category of legal aid. That was an important and welcome initiative. We must also bear in mind the work done by Mr Nick Hurd, a former Member of this House, as the Prime Minister’s adviser and envoy on the Grenfell inquiry. I want to make sure that the correlation of that type of role is fully understood in the concept of a potential independent public advocate. I am sure that the hon. Lady and I will have further exchanges, and I am sure she will forgive me if I have not answered every specific question that she has asked. I am profoundly grateful to her for her urgent question today.