The UK Government has pledged to work with Hillsborough parents Jenni Hicks and Trevor Hicks, their legal team and members of the House of Lords to find a way of correcting historic court records which have been shown to contain serious factual errors.
The commitment came during a debate in the House of Lords on October 21 on the Hicks Amendment to the Hillsborough Law, which seeks to give families and individuals a legal route to correct the public record when they have been seriously misrepresented in court as a result of failures by public authorities.
Amendment named after Sarah and Victoria Hicks
The amendment, named after Jenni and Trevor's daughters Sarah, 19, and Victoria, 15, who were unlawfully killed in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, has attracted significant cross-party support. It was tabled by leading human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy of the Shaws, Lord Alton of Liverpool, Lord Wills and former Prime Minister Baroness May of Maidenhead.
Responding to the debate, Government Minister Lord Lemos told peers: “The government is committed to working with peers and indeed the Hicks family on the best way that we can make the truth known. Not just for this case, not just for the experiences of Victoria and Sarah, but for all those whose lives were lost at Hillsborough.”
Peers speak on the importance of the amendment
The commitment followed a speech by Baroness Kennedy, who told the House of Lords the amendment was intended to address the injustices suffered by the Hicks family. She said: “The amendment is named after Victoria and Sarah Hicks, two teenage sisters who were killed in the Hillsborough disaster.”
Describing the failure to correct the original court record, she told peers: “I remind this House that this really is about setting the record straight, and that can be vitally important for public confidence in our systems.”
Lord Alton of Liverpool, who has supported the family's campaign, praised Jenni and Trevor's determination to secure justice and stressed the wider importance of the amendment. He said: “This isn't about those children alone. This is about other people's children as well. This is about the common good. This is about a wider public interest and why I so admired their tenacity and their courage and their dignity when they came to speak at this meeting.”
He added that the proposed legal remedy sat well with the Hillsborough Law's objectives of securing truth, candour and transparency. Lord Wills, another signatory to the amendment, told peers: “It's quite simple, and it's a matter of justice, not just for Jenni and Trevor Hicks, who suffered so much for so long, but to stop other families suffering in the same way in the future.”
Long campaign for justice
Jenni and Trevor have fought a long campaign to seek justice for their daughters, and launched the Hicks’ Rule campaign to correct the legal record following a 1992 House of Lords judgment in their case against South Yorkshire Police. The judgment relied on the assumption that their daughters had lost consciousness within 30 seconds and died shortly afterwards, an account fundamentally undermined by the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012 and the fresh inquests between 2014 and 2016.
Despite the subsequent medical evidence, the original court record has never been formally corrected. The Hicks Amendment, Amendment 106, proposed a legal mechanism enabling affected individuals or their families to apply for a statement correcting the public record where a court has found that a public authority's failure to act with candour, transparency and frankness led to serious and adverse misrepresentation.
As with the vast majority of amendments during the debate, the amendment was withdrawn at Committee stage, with the Government and supporters now expected to explore how its objectives can be achieved as the legislation progresses.
Next steps for the Hicks family and the Bill
The Hicks family and their legal team say they will seek to take up the Minister's offer to work together on a solution ahead of the Bill's next parliamentary stage. Separately, South Yorkshire Police has agreed in principle to a Statement in Open Court in Jenni and Trevor's own case. The family continues to seek a hearing at the earliest opportunity to ensure that the truth about Sarah and Victoria's deaths is finally placed on the public record.
The Hillsborough Law itself has now cleared the committee stage in the Upper Chamber of the House of Lords on its way to becoming an official law on the statute books. The legislation would require public officials and authorities to act with candour and transparency during investigations and public inquiries. The Bill is named after the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, where 97 Liverpool supporters died in a crush during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
The Bill will now be further considered by the House of Lords at report stage, which will see amendments voted on. It will then return to the Commons for approval.
