It’s time to pass a law to make sure no bereaved family is ever again callously made to relive their trauma in court
Back in 2009, on the evening of the 20th anniversary, I made a promise to the Hillsborough families at Liverpool town hall that I would do everything I could to support them. Twelve years on, we have arrived at the end of the legal line. But there is one more battle left, and it’s the biggest of them all: the root-and-branch reform of English justice.
The families’ 32-year fight for justice furnishes us with all the evidence anyone could need that our legal system is broken. Aside from the brutal, re-traumatising way it treats bereaved families, it has comprehensively failed to provide any real accountability for 96 unlawful deaths and a cover-up. The latter took the form of a false, blame-shifting narrative briefed to newspapers days after the tragedy, was maintained by South Yorkshire police throughout the Taylor inquiry and the first inquest, and was repeated only last week to the BBC by a senior QC involved in the case.
Andy Burnham is the mayor of Greater Manchester
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