Government did not want 'arbitrary timeline' in passing Hillsborough Law before anniversary, Justice Secretary says

Ninety-seven Liverpool fans were killed as a result of a crush at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield in 1989.

They were unlawfully killed amid a number of police errors, an inquest jury ruled in 2016.

The football fans were initially blamed and it took decades for their families to get justice.

Campaigners have been calling for legislation to prevent these experiences happening again, and to help victims of other scandals to get justice.

Speaking to Parliament’s joint-committee on human rights yesterday, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “We are absolutely committed to passing what has come to be known as the Hillsborough Law.

“We want to make sure that the provisions are fit for purpose. There is a tension, and we’ve got to get it right in drafting, about what action is caught by criminal sanction and what is not.”

Ms Mahmood was responding to a question from Lord Alton, a Liverpool MP at the time of the disaster, who said he was “disappointed that it wasn’t possible to keep” the Prime Minister’s pledge.

She continued: “When you’re placing a broad duty on thousands of civil servants and other officials all over the country, it’s important to work out the conduct that might attract criminal sanction and the conduct that might be dealt with by employers in other ways.

“We wanted to make sure that what we come forward with really strikes the right balance, and it’s a duty the families can have confidence in, but that we can also give clarity to all the people that will be under that duty as well.”

And Ms Mahmood claimed that campaigners supported the decision to spend more time honing the legislation.

“We’ve missed that deadline, but in conversation with the various groups on this who have been campaigning for many, many years - there was a view not to hold ourselves to an arbitrary timeline and get things wrong, better to wait a bit and get it right,” she added.

In March, it was reported that a meeting between the Prime Minister and campaigners had been cancelled, with claims officials were attempting to have the contents of a bill watered down.