Rudd promises Orgreave decision later this year

Mrs Rudd insisted the “work of the IPCC will not delay the work that I will be doing” considering the case campaigners have been making for an inquiry into the events at the Orgreave coking plant at the height of the miners’ strike in June 1984.

The Home Secretary promised she would be looking at the case over the summer before meeting with the campaigners in September and making a decision as soon as possible after that.

Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham used an urgent question to raise the issue in the Commons today after Government minister Lord Keen suggested last week that the IPCC had launching an inquiry into events at Orgreave could conflict with its own ongoing investigation into the Hillsborough disaster.

The IPCC subsequently said the decision over whether to hold an inquiry over Orgreave was “entirely a matter for the Home Secretary”.

Mr Burnham said Lord Keen’s comments appeared to be a “Home Office manouvre to shunt a controversial issue into the long grass” and urged her to order the Orgreave inquiry immediately.

Mrs Rudd told MPs Orgreave was “one of the most important issues” she was facing in her new role as Home Secretary.

The conclusion of the inquests into the deaths at Hillsborough in 1989 has thrown a fresh spotlight on events at Orgreave and the suggestion that tactics used by South Yorkshire police in 1984 were replicated five years later.