Inquiry call on disaster statements

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has responded to reports saying that he has wrongly claimed to have spoken to the Taylor Inquiry when he was an inspector at South Yorkshire Police.

The claim related to an account that he gave after the Hillsborough disaster which was released by the Hillsborough Independent Panel. On the day of the disaster Sir Bernard had been at a boys’ club in Sheffield in which friends and relatives of fans waited for news from the ground.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: “The commissioner was shown an account in October 2012 that he had given after Hillsborough. This is a document released by the Inquiry Panel after it published its report.

“The commissioner assumed, therefore, that it had come from the Taylor Inquiry. If that is not the case, the commissioner would like to establish the circumstances in which the account was given.

“These events were more than 20 years ago, and a number of inquiries were conducted by the Coroner, the police and by Lord Taylor’s team. That may be the reason for this confusion.

“To be clear though, the only appropriate way to clarify this is through the official investigation being conducted by the IPCC.”

The IPCC is carrying out an investigation into alleged police misconduct at the Hillsborough tragedy in which 96 people died. An IPCC spokesman said it had not received any complaint about Sir Bernard’s statement.