As the new Prime Minister sets out his vision for the country, his proven commitment to the Hillsborough families provides an opportunity to show new political leadership on human rights, by demonstrating how they help ordinary folk in their everyday lives. This blog by the PEC's Director, Murray Hunt, is part of the project Human Rights: Informing the UK Debate.
When Andy Burnham spoke at Anfield on the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster in 2009, he was heckled by angry Liverpool fans shouting “Justice for the 96!”. He has since described that moment as “the turning point in my life”, the beginning of his political journey away from Westminster towards a profound commitment to the principle that power should be devolved to and exercised at the local level for it to make a real difference to people’s lives.
Today, in a coincidence of which fate should be proud, and even the best comms team could only ever have dreamed, he returns to Westminster as Prime Minister to set out his vision for the country in the House of Commons, just as the Hillsborough Law, which he has done so much to bring about, starts its passage through the House of Lords.
The long awaited and tenaciously fought for “Hillsborough Law” (official title: the Public Office (Accountability) Bill), which the new Prime Minister has acknowledged also owes a lot to his predecessor Keir Starmer, has the potential to be a turning point in the public’s understanding of what human rights law has ever done for them.
A daily diet of negative stories, by a largely hostile print and broadcast media, amplified by the polarising effect of social media platforms, suggests that human rights laws only protect undeserving groups and never the interests of ordinary folk. The narrative that dominates public discourse is that human rights are in direct opposition to the things that people care about, like security, democratic accountability and national sovereignty. It is not surprising that polling evidence suggests that the public’s support for remaining in the European Convention on Human Rights has been weakening in the last couple of years.
In the face of the media barrage, mainstream politicians across the political spectrum have taken the path of least resistance and joined the chorus of criticism from the extremes. For the first time, all of the UK’s political parties on the right and centre-right are in favour of withdrawing from the ECHR. The UK is the only country in which there is a serious possibility that it will leave the ECHR after the next election. The argument that “human rights laws are on your side” is not only being lost, many politicians seem to have lost the will to make it.
But, as our Explainer on Human Rights and the Hillsborough Law makes clear, the story of Hillsborough demonstrates the validity of the claim. It shows how human rights laws help ordinary people hold the State accountable when its failings have had devastating consequences for everyday lives.
Political will was of course hugely important, and politicians from all parties showed crucial political leadership at different points in the saga. But the courageous families of the Hillsborough victims were only able to secure inquest verdicts that their loved ones had been unlawfully killed because the European Court of Human Rights has interpreted the right to life in the ECHR as requiring the State to carry out an effective investigation where a life has been lost and the State is implicated.
It was only because of the combination of political will and that important case-law of the Strasbourg Court, on which the Human Rights Act enabled the families to rely, that a measure of State accountability for the events of that fateful day has been achieved. It is a simple fact that, had that legal requirement of an effective investigation not been part of our law, there would still be no justice for the 97. Human rights law, the Hillsborough story shows, facilitates political accountability for State failures as well as legal remedies.
But the unacceptably long time it has taken the Hillsborough families to get justice also shows that making the rights in the ECHR part of our law through the Human Rights Act is not enough to make those rights effective. More detailed national laws are needed to ensure that the rights are actually protected in practice.
That is what the Hillsborough Law will do. Thanks to the dignified courage, foresight and determination of the victims’ families, the Hillsborough Law will put flesh on the bones of the underlying legal rights, by spelling out in more detail exactly what is required: a duty of candour on public authorities and officials, and parity of representation for bereaved families, supported by public funds, to ensure their meaningful participation in the investigation.
Those detailed measures make it much more likely that the State will be held accountable in future for such serious failings.
That is precisely how the ECHR system is meant to operate – States not just making ECHR rights part of their legal system through important laws like the Human Rights Act, but going further by adopting, through the democratic process, detailed national laws giving meaningful protection to those rights in their particular legal system.
So the story of the Hillsborough Law demonstrates that, contrary to the prevailing media narrative, human rights law is on the side of ordinary people like the victims’ families when they are trying to hold the State to account for its failings. And we should not forget that it has been ordinary people who have repeatedly suffered because of State failures like the Grenfell fire, infected blood, the Manchester Arena attack and the Post Office Horizon fiasco, and who will in future be empowered by the Hillsborough Law to hold the State accountable.
The UK’s new Prime Minister has shown that he clearly understands all this. Over many years he has played a crucial role in helping the families establish the truth and hold the State accountable. He has made it a clear priority of his premiership to improve the lives of ordinary people, including by empowering them against the unaccountable state.
His proven track record on Hillsborough gives him a unique opportunity to turn the tide of hostile criticism of human rights laws, and provide the sort of imaginative political leadership that human rights so urgently needs in the UK - by explaining clearly to people that the Hillsborough Law is proof that human rights law is on their side.
He should now seize that opportunity to provide human rights leadership, before the country sleepwalks out of these important protections for lack of popular understanding of how they improve people's lives.
