Why the Hillsborough families back the documents going through an independent panel, rather than being released to the public first
The most important point to make about the controversy over government documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster is that the issues at stake are not as substantial as they appear. A passing sight of this high-profile standoff, via Twitter or links to the e-petition which more than 127,000 people have now signed, might suggest that the government is seeking to withhold the papers which record discussions about the disaster conducted at the time by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.
This is not what the government is now saying, and the Cabinet Office has emphasised that it does intend to release all the papers it holds on Hillsborough. The question being wrestled over is about how they are released. The Cabinet Office says it wants to provide them to the independent panel set up last year specifically to read, publish a report, then release to the families and public, all the Hillsborough documents. The BBC, though, has a freedom of information request which the information commissioner has said should be granted, in the public interest, and therefore the papers should simply be published immediately, bypassing the panel.
The background is that last year, after the calls for justice on the 20th anniversary of the disaster, in which 96 people died, the Labour government committed to ensuring that all public documents relating to Hillsborough should be released. These are held by the government, South Yorkshire police (which holds the vast bulk of the archive), Sheffield city council, the ambulance service and several other public bodies. Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, whose Hillsborough stadium was found to be unsafe in key, hideous aspects, is also understood to be making its papers available.
This disclosure is a huge breakthrough in the families' long campaign for the unvarnished truth, prompted by two Merseyside MPs and the then ministers Andy Burnham and Maria Eagle. But the Hillsborough Family Support Group, which represents the majority of the bereaved families, came quickly to believe, along with Burnham, Eagle and the public bodies involved, that some kind of process was required to make sense of the outpouring of documents. That is why the independent panel was set up, precisely to reach a clearer understanding of the documents' significance, and, critically, to share them with the families first, before releasing them to the wider public, which it has a duty to do.
For 22 years the families have argued that they have never discovered the full truth about the disaster and how their loved ones died, and they accuse South Yorkshire police of attempting to cover up its own culpability, possibly with the approval of Thatcher and her government.
The families have always pointed to Thatcher's visit to Hillsborough the day after the disaster, 16 April 1989, when she was briefed by the then South Yorkshire police chief constable, Peter Wright. The police case, to Lord Justice Taylor's subsequent inquiry and the coroner's inquest, was that the disaster was caused by misbehaving and drunk Liverpool fans, many arriving late and without tickets. Taylor rejected that completely, laid the blame firmly on police mismanagement of the crowd – together with the unsafe ground, which was not properly overseen by the council – and he criticised the police for presenting the story of fans' misbehaviour. Despite that, Thatcher's press secretary, Bernard Ingham, who went with her to Hillsborough, maintained a view that the disaster was caused by, as he put it, "a tanked up mob" of Liverpool fans. That led families, survivors of the disaster and supporters to believe that he and Thatcher must have been told that version of events during their visit, and so would have been more sympathetic to the police's conduct of its case through the legal processes which followed.
So the discussions held by the Thatcher government, and any record of them, are potentially very significant to being able finally to tell the fullest possible story, based on the documentation, of Hillsborough and its aftermath.
The families came to the view that they needed an independent group of experts, whom they could trust, to see and read the documentation and produce a report, giving its view of how it adds to public understanding of the disaster. As much of the documentation will be heartbreaking in its detail, showing how their own loved ones died, the families were insistent they should see them first, before they were released to the public.
So, in a way, the debate about how the cabinet papers should be released has already been had, and the conclusion, agreed by the HFSG, is that, as with all the documentation, the independent panel should see them first.
The BBC's FOI request, which was made before the panel was set up, in some ways now only tests this process. The information commissioner has ruled that the cabinet papers should be released. The Cabinet Office is not arguing that they should not, only that they should be released to the panel, rather than directly to the public.
Margaret Aspinall, the chair of the HFSG, whose son, James, died at Hillsborough, agrees with that, saying:
"We want full disclosure of all documents, with no redactions, for the families, for survivors, who we must not forget suffered greatly at Hillsborough, and for supporters. We are humbled that so many people are supporting us, and have signed the e-petition. But although we are cautious given our experience over 22 years, we do trust the panel and maintain that the papers be released to the panel first, so they can be put into context, and then shown to the families, before then being released to the wider public."The make-up of the panel and its terms of reference were agreed last year after long negotiations. Chaired by the bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, the panel's members include medical and police experts and, crucial to the HFSG's confidence in it, professor Phil Scraton, author of Hillsborough: The Truth, who first uncovered the process by which the South Yorkshire police had junior officers' statements systematically changed before going to the Taylor inquiry. He emphasised the panel's duty to secure the full release of all papers relating to Hillsborough:
"The panel is not a gatekeeper. Our role is not to determine what is or is not published, our responsibility is full public disclosure. Our role is not to filter information but to secure access to documents that otherwise would have been restricted for years to come. We are engaged in an unprecedented process and our priorities are the families, the survivors and the broader public interest."
The BBC has argued its FOI request should be granted because more of the documents will come out. The corporation's FOI specialist, Martin Rosenbaum, has pointed to the panel's terms of reference, which potentially exclude from publication some cabinet papers – those which could undermine the government principle of collective cabinet responsibility, which is that all members of a cabinet stand together behind a decision made.
However the Cabinet Office has said it recognises the information commissioner's view that there is an overriding public interest in these papers being released, which means it will not seek to withhold papers from the panel on those grounds or tell the panel not to publish them.
In that sense, the BBC's FOI request has helped greatly; it has concentrated minds and looks to have ensured that the government will not seek to withhold any papers. However the government's argument, which is supported by the HFSG, remains that it should happen via the independent panel. It was set up precisely because the families feared they would be overwhelmed by documents suddenly published, struggle to make proper, coherent sense of the story for which they have now waited 22 years, and not have the dignity of seeing the material first.
That is why they are prepared to wait a little longer for the papers from the Thatcher government, even though they have for so long believed that the government stood behind the police case to the legal procedures, which caused such pain. What remains to be seen, though, is whether the discussions Thatcher, Ingham and Peter Wright held were documented in detail at all, and whether these papers, whose process of disclosure has caused a storm for a fortnight, turn out to contain much of the missing truths which the families seek.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2011/aug/24/hillsborough-documents-independent-panel