Liverpool City Council has backed calls to revoke Norman Bettison’s knighthood.
Bettison was one of 12 former officers named in an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) report into police conduct at the Hillsborough disaster.
The 69-year-old had been set to face criminal charges related to the unlawful killing of 97 Liverpool supporters in Sheffield but they were dropped in 2018.
However the IOPC report stated that Bettison, a chief inspector with South Yorkshire Police chief in 1989, should have faced gross misconduct charges.
He later served as chief constable for Merseyside Police between 1998 and 2005, to great fury from both Hillsborough victims’ families and survivors.
Bettison, who retired in 2013 after the Hillsborough Independent Panel report, was knighted and received a Queen’s Police Medal for services to policing.
Ian Byrne, Labour MP for West Derby and a Hillsborough survivor, wrote to cabinet office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds urging both honours to be revoked in light of the watchdog’s damning verdict on Tuesday (December 2).
An Early Day Motion in Parliament will also call on prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to advise King Charles that Bettison’s knighthood be removed.
The call has been backed by bereaved families and some of Byrne’s fellow Parliamentarians as well as Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotheram.
Council chiefs have now added their backing with a motion tabled on Wednesday (December 3) declaring Bettison ‘unfit’ to hold a knighthood.