The next Prime Minister has been urged to introduce a ‘Hillsborough Law’.
A letter written to leaders of the three main political parties made the plea following David Duckenfield’s acquittal for gross negligence manslaughter.
Duckenfield was the police match commander on the day of the 1989 tragedy that saw 96 Liverpool supporters unlawfully killed but found not guilty at retrial.
The letter sent to Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson proposes that a public authority accountability bill is brought into law by the prospective new PM.
It would require public authorities to have ‘a duty of candour’ in legal processes and match legal funding provided to bodies such as the police and fire brigade.
Liverpool’s Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram, his Manchester counterpart Andy Burnham and Hillsborough Family Support Group chair Margaret Aspinall all co-signed the letter.
“Following events of last week, the families find themselves in the position where 96 of their loved-ones have been found to have been unlawfully killed and nobody has been held accountable for that,” the letter states.
“We believe this unsatisfactory situation is the result of a trial and re-trial which undermined the authoritative Inquest of 2016 – the longest such process in English legal history.
“From what we have witnessed first-hand, we can only conclude that the English legal system simply does not work for bereaved families, particularly when they are up against public bodies or the State,” the letter states.
“It is impersonal, insensitive and emphatically not a level playing field.
“For bereaved families, walking into an English court is akin to walking into a casino – a place where money and connections talk and where the odds are heavily stacked against them before proceedings have even started.”
“While this won’t change the verdict which has been reached in this case,” it continues.
“it will at least be of some comfort to the Hillsborough families for it to be recognised by the country that the failure is not theirs, but of an overly hierarchical and adversarial system which is deeply flawed and in need of fundamental reform.”