The so-called Hillsborough Law took centre stage at the Labour Party conference today, with the prime minister declaring at the start of his hour-long speech that injustice will have no place to hide.
The proposed legislation, announced earlier this month, will impose a professional and legal duty of candour on public officials and criminal sanctions for egregious breaches. In what the government declared the biggest expansion of legal aid in a decade, bereaved families would be entitled to non means tested help and support for inquests.
Keir Starmer was introduced to the stage by Hillsborough campaigner Margaret Aspinall, who told the conference that no matter what a person’s job or rank, ‘there are consequences if you tell lies’ and the legislation ‘will change things for the good of the nation and make it a level playing field for ordinary people’.
Starmer told the conference that Hillsborough Law represented not just a promise delivered but that it was also a recognition that, whether Hillsborough, Grenfell, Windrush or the Horizon scandal, 'the British state consistently refused to see injustice because of who the victims are. Because they were working class, black, women and girls’.
Starmer added: ‘I know we can never undo the pain for you [Margaret] and the other families, but we can show that, in the Britain we’re building, the state will see, listen and be accountable to working class people - because injustice has no place to hide.’
1 Reader's comment