Prime Minister Keir Starmer has paid tribute to the courage of the Hillsborough families, describing their decades-long fight for justice as humbling, as he confirmed that a new law will ensure such a shameful episode can never happen again.
Starmer praises families' resilience
In an exclusive interview, Starmer said he did not think he could have endured what the families have gone through. He highlighted the story of Margaret Aspinall, who lost her son James in the disaster, and used the insurance payout from his death to fund a barrister at the original inquest, while the state used taxpayer money to hire armies of lawyers to deny justice.
“That’s the first thing that humbles you when meeting the Hillsborough families – how much they have endured,” Starmer said. “It’s not just the unimaginable pain of losing their loved ones at a football game – a place of joy and human spirit. It is also the burden of having to grieve whilst the full power of the British state is deployed to cover up the truth.”
Hillsborough Law to prevent future cover-ups
Starmer confirmed that the Hillsborough Law, which is set to pass in his final week as Prime Minister, will make sure that such a shameful episode – and many others like it – can never happen again. The law will impose a legal duty of candour on public servants and authorities, requiring them to act honestly and openly, and will prevent the use of public funds to cover up wrongdoing.
The Prime Minister noted that there is a class element to such injustices, citing the Grenfell Tower fire, the Windrush scandal, the grooming gangs, and the Horizon IT scandal as examples where the British state failed to see injustice because of who the victims were. “That is why, while it is right this law will always bear the Hillsborough name, it is not just a law for the 97. It is a law for everyone,” he said.
Law for working people
Starmer said the law is a symbol of a state that the Labour Party, in the proudest tradition of its values, will make accountable to working people. “It’s about millions of working people they will never meet. Making sure that nobody else like them, ever has to suffer as they did,” he added.
The Hillsborough disaster, in which 97 Liverpool fans died in a crush at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield in 1989, has been the subject of a decades-long campaign for justice, with families fighting to expose the cover-up by authorities.
