Hillsborough

Andrew Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that with his experience of Bloody Sunday and the Saville inquiry, the hon. Gentleman is completely right to say that the families will need a lot of support and help as they digest what is in the report. The commonality, as it were, of the two things, is that a Government should not make an apology just because something bad happened some time ago. The apology should be in respect of the fact that there is new information that injustice took place and was allowed to lie for far too long, and that false stories were got up about what happened. That is why an apology is not only right, but the necessary and correct thing to do, and that is where there is common ground between the two issues raised by the hon. Gentleman.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

On behalf of my constituents who lost family members and friends, I thank the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for the dignified way in which they have dealt with this very difficult statement.

One of the first questions raised with me by a constituent when I was first elected some 20 years ago was this: who gave the authority to start the misinformation through the police to the media and so on? Is the Prime Minister satisfied that he can identify those persons, and those persons who were subsequently involved in the cover-up to protect the person who started the misinformation? That is a key question. The hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) put it exactly right: there ought to be prosecutions on that point.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman asks the right question. It is necessary to study the report. The families have long believed that, although the Taylor inquiry came to the correct conclusion about police culpability, there was then a move engineered by some police officers—I believe there is evidence in the report about this—to try to put forward an alternative narrative, which was wrong, deeply insulting and very hurtful. That and new evidence on it is contained in the report, which is worth while.