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Hillsborough document release

Hemibr

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mikem8634 Rising Star

mikem8634

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He was right though wasnt he?

 

No, he was not.

 

He sent that e-mail on the 8th September 2012 four days before the Independent Panel Report was released on 12th September 2012

 

One month later he gave the following testimony to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

 

The most generous conclusion that can be drawn is that he was unaware of much of the material in the report and even a handful of days before it was released was still in the thrall of elements of the black propaganda campaign that have now been discredited. He then read the report and experienced a Damascean conversion. I hope this is true.

 

A more cynical appraisal of his rather radical change of tack between e-mail and select committee? I will leave that to others for the moment.

 

I have highlighted passages of interest and further underlined the items which are particularly telling.

 

 

Part One

 

HOUSE OF COMMONS

 

ORAL EVIDENCE

 

TAKEN BEFORE THE

 

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

HILLSBOROUGH INDEPENDENT PANEL REPORT

 

TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2012

 

CHIEF CONSTABLE DAVID CROMPTON AND DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR PHILIP ETHERIDGE

 

SHEILA COLEMAN

 

RT HON LORD FALCONER QC, MARGARET ASPINALL, TREVOR HICKS AND JENNI HICKS

 

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 119

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

 

1.

 

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.

 

2.

 

Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

 

3.

 

Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.

 

4.

 

Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

Oral Evidence

 

 

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 16 October 2012

Members present:

 

Keith Vaz (Chair)

Nicola Blackwood

Steve McCabe

Alun Michael

Bridget Phillipson

Mark Reckless

Mr David Winnick

________________

 

EXAMINATION OF WITNESSES

 

Witnesses: Chief Constable David Crompton, South Yorkshire Police, and Detective Chief Inspector Philip Etheridge, South Yorkshire Police, gave evidence.

 

Q1 Chair: Can I call the Committee to order and welcome our witness today, the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire? Could I refer all those present to the Register of Members’ Interests where the interests of all members of the Committee are noted. Are there any other interests that need to be declared?

 

Alun Michael: I should declare as an interest that I am intending to stand as a candidate for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections on 15 November in relation to South Wales.

 

Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Michael. As this is Mr Michael’s last meeting as a member of the Select Committee, on behalf of the Committee could I also thank him very much for all the work that he has done on the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Justice Select Committee, and wish him well in his election?

 

I move now to the subject matter of today’s inquiry. This is not a new inquiry into Hillsborough; this is for the Committee to be updated on progress since the Independent Panel’s report. I am most grateful to you, Chief Constable, for coming here today to give evidence. Would you like to put on the record your views of the Independent Panel’s report? When you first read it, what was your reaction?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: My reaction, Chairman, was shock. I read that as the head of an organisation that had been held very much to blame over the years, and also, once the Panel’s report came out, that was all brought together in one comprehensive document. I was shocked. It was a very difficult day. I made that very clear to the media on the day. It has remained a difficult experience since then, and it will continue to be a difficult experience for quite some time.

 

Q2 Chair: What is morale like in the South Yorkshire police force at the moment?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: People are feeling a little beleaguered. In fairness, the minority of the force were even serving at the time of Hillsborough, and not all of the people who are currently in the force and who were around then were at Hillsborough in any way, shape or form. Inevitably when you get an organisation that becomes the focus of lots of negative media attention then it is difficult for people. So, yes, people are going around with slightly heavy hearts, but these are serious issues.

 

Q3 Chair: We realise and we accept that you were not there during those times-you served in other police forces-but you were very clear when you spoke to Newsnight on the day of the report. You said this, "My position is very simple and straightforward, which is that if people have broken the law then they will be prosecuted." Do you stand by that statement?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Absolutely, yes. In one sense it is not a revelation for any police officer to say that if somebody has broken the law, they should be prosecuted, and I absolutely stand by what I said.

 

Q4 Chair: Presumably you have looked at the report in great detail and you have been following this whole issue from the time that you were appointed Chief Constable. I know it was very recently, but clearly when you took over you knew that the Panel was meeting. Do you have any idea as to how many people may be responsible and may have to be prosecuted?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: That is an impossible question to answer at this stage, Chairman. I am sure Committee members will be aware that this matter was referred to the IPCC not just by me but by other police forces as well. The IPCC made a lengthy press statement on Friday where they made clear in quite some detail the issues that they were going to look at. That process has been set in motion. I am on the record on several occasions having said that I will co-operate in any way at all I can to assist the IPCC with their endeavours, which will probably be lengthy and complex.

 

Q5 Chair: That is the process that this Committee wishes to follow from now on. We would like to see regular updates as to what is happening with regard to these matters. Do you accept the findings of the report that 164 statements have been altered by senior officers in the South Yorkshire Police? Do you accept what the report said on that?

Chief Constable Crompton: Yes.

 

Q6 Chair: You do. Is it right that there are now 195 serving officers in South Yorkshire who were on duty on the ground on the day of the Hillsborough tragedy, or is that figure too high or too low? We are just interested in the facts.

 

Chief Constable Crompton: My understanding was that the figure was nearer 100 and that we currently have about 200 officers who are serving in the force who were in the force at that time, but not necessarily at Hillsborough. My understanding was that the figure was lower than that.

 

Q7 Chair: Let us get the figures right; 100 currently serving South Yorkshire police officers were at the ground on the day in question?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Yes. I don’t know if it is exactly 100, but a figure around about that. Some of those officers were on duty right from the outset, other officers-once things had gone wrong-were drafted in to try to deal with the aftermath, and that led to the sorts of numbers that you just referred to.

 

Q8 Chair: When I wrote to you, in your reply to me you referred to an "alleged cover-up". You will recall your letter to me just after the report was published. Do you still believe it was an alleged cover-up rather than anything more? Why have you added the word "alleged" before cover-up, when the Independent Panel is quite clear that the statements were altered?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: That might well have been the old habits of a police officer coming out. Things are alleged ultimately until they are proved from that perspective, and although there is very significant information and detail in the report, we are now involved in a process that will either ultimately prove or not whether there was a cover-up. I don’t mean it to sound disrespectful to anybody; it was merely a technical detail.

 

Q9 Chair: You accept what the panel report has said, that there was a cover-up and that statements were altered?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: I definitely accept that the statements were altered, yes.

 

Q10 Chair: Taking us through the process now, the IPCC are conducting their own very detailed inquiry. You know you have 100 police officers who are currently serving. Do you know how many former police officers who were employed by South Yorkshire you have on your files whom you may need to consider?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Considerably more than 100, Mr Chairman.

 

Q11 Chair: Do you know how many?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: If I said 600 or 700, that would be in the region. People are aware if they have read the report that in the region of 1,000 police officers were on duty at the game on the day. They were not all South Yorkshire police officers, although the vast majority were. Just to give you a general figure for people to work with, there are several hundred retired officers who may come within the ambit of this inquiry.

 

Q12 Chair: That is very helpful. Thank you very much for trying to be specific on that. If we could look at the process, what exactly are you doing? We know there is an IPCC inquiry. What are you doing to send to the IPCC those cases you have described as being people who may need to be prosecuted? Are you going through this person by person, file by file, and who is doing this, bearing in mind the resources that you have? You are talking about 1,000 police officers, either serving or former police officers, so how is that process being put together?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: So far the IPCC have only asked us for details of officers who are either currently serving, who were there, and of retired officers, and those who may no longer be around because they have died. In terms of trying to complete their records, we are in the process of supplying that information. As far as detailing which particular members of staff or officers or former officers should be looked at for which particular offences, I have to be clear and say we are not doing that.

 

Q13 Chair: You are not doing this?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Let me explain, please. Prior to the referral process I talked through at length with the IPCC about what might be the best long-term objective in doing this. I came to the view, and it was supported in the end by the IPCC, that the less South Yorkshire Police has to do with any referral process, given the general context we are working in, the better in the long-run for the inquiry. Let me elaborate just a little bit more. As I said, my concern is to assist the IPCC as much as possible. The issue for me was less about whom we might refer but whom we might decide not to refer, and at some later stage it would probably have been highly likely that someone would have said, "Well, we really don’t agree with your reasons for not referring these people."

 

Chair: Yes. So you are not doing that process?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: No.

 

Q14 Chair: What are you doing, just giving the names and address and the files and leaving it up to them?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Yes, because I still have a team who are very familiar with the archive and all of the material that has been supplied by the force, I have said that we will provide the IPCC with any material that by one means or another they feel is relevant but for whatever reason they might not have had so far.

 

Q15 Chair: So you will hand over a list of names of the serving officers and the former officers who were there on the day, but you will take no part in assessing whether or not they were culpable for anything on that day, is that right?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: That is right, and I think that is the best way of going about it.

 

Q16 Chair: How long will that process take?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: We can complete that process quite quickly.

 

Chair: What does that mean?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Within a week.

 

Q17 Chair: Within a week of today you can give them the lists of names that they require?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Certainly the vast majority anyway.

 

Q18 Chair: When do you think you can give them the complete list?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Probably in a week, but if I said a fortnight, that would be reasonable.

 

Chair: Two weeks from today you would have done your work and handed it to the IPCC?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Yes.

 

Q19 Chair: One final question from me. You know that today the Attorney General has announced that he is going to apply to the High Court for fresh inquests. Presumably you fully support that decision?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Yes. The families wrote to me two or three weeks ago and I wrote back and made it very clear that we would not oppose any request to reopen the inquests. I asked the families to proceed on that basis so that it did not introduce either any extra difficulties or costs into the system.

 

Chair: Thank you.

 

 

 

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/uc622-i/uc62201.htm

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Part 2

 

Q20 Mr Winnick: Can I just go back for a moment, Chief Constable? You said you accept the Panel’s findings. Do you do so without any qualifications whatsoever?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Yes.

 

Q21 Mr Winnick: Thank you. The Chair also referred to the 116 of 164 statements identified for substantive amendments that were amended to remove or alter comments unfavourable to the police. As far as the police are concerned, is that not one of the most serious aspects of this matter?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: It is. It has dominated the commentary ever since 12 September when the report came out. It is a very serious issue that needs to be resolved.

 

Q22 Mr Winnick: Chief Constable, would this not mean that since this terrible tragedy occurred in April 1989, the feelings of the relatives and the local community as a whole in their criticism of the police have been absolutely justified?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Yes, I would agree.

 

Q23 Mr Winnick: Apart from the fact of what has happened regarding the alteration of documents, which is a very serious criticism of the police, what are the main lessons that the police force of which you are Chief Constable should learn from this?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: One is around the general size of pulling together all of the documents that were required as part of this inquiry. The Hillsborough Independent Panel made a recommendation that there should be some move to establish an archive in the early stages after any large disasters. I would support that in the sense that it has taken a lot of time and effort to try to locate many documents that have not always been that easy to locate over the last 23 years. So in terms of some of the administration that lies behind this, there are some lessons to learn. As far as the operation of the force is concerned, some of the main issues have been dealt with over time. For example, a very clear one would be how police officers are trained to deal with and control football matches. That has changed out of all recognition over the last 23 years. It is not new learning, but it is learning that stems from the original Hillsborough disaster.

 

Q24 Mr Winnick: Just one final question, if I may. You were not there at the time and in no way responsible-no one is suggesting you were-but can you explain the sickness in mind of very senior police officers at the time who wanted to say the responsibility for the tragedy was drunken people, hooligans, thugs and the rest of it? What sort of sickness could have occurred in the minds of those police officers who wanted to put the blame on totally innocent people?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: I cannot answer your question because I cannot speculate what was going through people’s minds. It was wrong, and in the immediate aftermath of the disaster people did and said things that were wrong.

 

Q25 Mr Winnick: Wrong and sick, would you accept?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Yes.

 

Mr Winnick: Thank you.

 

Q26 Chair: You have made an apology, have you not, on behalf of the South Yorkshire Police to all those concerned?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Chairman, yes. On the day of the release I made an apology to the families and the Liverpool supporters, and I will take this opportunity of repeating both the apology and how sorry we are for what went on that day and also things that went on subsequently.

 

Chair: Thank you. I am going to suspend the Committee for 10 minutes.

 

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

 

 

 

On resuming-

 

Q27 Steve McCabe: Mr Crompton, given what we have heard about the very large number of statements that were altered, are there currently any national standards or guidance on the taking and handling of evidence from police officers in situations where the police force itself may be accused of negligence or wrong doing?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: The short answer is no, there is no national guidance in those circumstances. There is guidance about how officers take statements in different circumstances, but not in the circumstances that you describe.

 

Q28 Steve McCabe: Do you think there is a need for some kind of national set of standards now? It seems to be one of the central features of this case that it was possible to deliberately distort what had happened. This was all about the evidence that was being provided by officers. It appears it was to protect their own force at all costs.

 

Chief Constable Crompton: In my opinion, no, there does not need to be a national standard. This was a unique event, and I do not feel it is necessary to go to the effort of creating a national standard for a one-off event. It just needs to be recognised as a unique event and dealt with.

 

Q29 Steve McCabe: Can I just ask you one last thing on that, then? In the absence of any national standards, how can the rest of us share your confidence that the absolute distortion of evidence by police officers in circumstances like this is a one-off event?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: If we were able to take ourselves back to 1989, there was no IPCC; there was the Police Complaints Authority, who had much more limited powers than the IPCC. As things stand now, all police forces have regular meetings with the IPCC irrespective of whether any serious incidents immediately prompt that meeting. So there is a constant overview of what is going on in the force. Any serious incidents of anything like the magnitude of Hillsborough would immediately invite the IPCC to be involved with much greater powers than used to exist with the Police Complaints Authority. Hopefully it would never happen, but should anything like this happen again, the sense of overview and scrutiny that would be brought to bear in the future would be of a completely different magnitude to what was there in 1989.

 

Steve McCabe: Thank you.

 

Q30 Chair: Your colleague, Richard Wells, who was Chief Constable between 1990 and 1998, talked about a culture of defensiveness and excessive secrecy at the time in the British Police force. Today, of course, you would say this was totally different, that you have to judge those circumstances at the time, and that the culture has altered dramatically; or has it?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: The culture is different. However, there is an issue about trust that comes out of Hillsborough. I have said this locally in relation to South Yorkshire in that it probably prompts us to look again at how we do our business and not necessarily just accept that time, culture and so on has moved on. We should look to try to open the police service up a little bit more to external influence and scrutiny. It is not necessarily something that we just stand still with; things have moved on since the late 1980s and the 1990s, but that does not mean that we are in a perfect place even now.

 

Q31 Chair: One of the issues is police forces investigating neighbouring police forces. In the case of Hillsborough it was not quite neighbouring, but the West Midlands Police force assisting Lord Justice Taylor did the investigation into South Yorkshire. A whole series of reports said everything was okay, when in fact it was not. They were not just let down by the police-in a sense, the whole of the establishment with this succession of reports from the Taylor report to the Independent Panel, absolved those responsible. Does it disappoint you that this has happened?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: Absolutely. Had things been different would we be sat here talking like this now? I suspect not. So yes, it does.

 

Q32 Mark Reckless: It appears certain politicians were involved in promulgating quite uncritically the South Yorkshire Police line at the time. Sir Irvine Patnick has apologised for his role in that. Do you think that something like that could still happen today or is there a better and perhaps more independent relationship between police and politicians now?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: It is a more independent relationship, but if I were to sit here and say that could not possibly happen today, I am not sure that would be a wise thing to do. While there might be a different relationship and times have moved on, I would not say it is impossible.

 

Q33 Chair: I have been approached by a parliamentary colleague who is a constituency MP for one of the police officers who was on duty on the day of the Hillsborough tragedy. He has informed me that this young police officer, because of what he was made to do by senior officers, has been totally traumatised by the experience. There were a number of very young officers there who had never experienced this before. What support and help is being given by South Yorkshire to these young police officers-obviously 23 years ago-who may still be in the force and who may have been affected by this terrible tragedy as well? What I have said to you, is that the first time you have heard of that issue?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: No, it is not the first time. In fairness, there is certainly more than one officer who has found life difficult and traumatic ever since the Hillsborough disaster. Support has been there throughout, whether that be via the Police Federation themselves or whether it be via the force Occupational Health Unit and Welfare and so on. Support is there, but clearly there will always be some people who find it more difficult than others to deal with a tragedy.

 

Q34 Chair: Finally on Hillsborough, before we turn to grooming, when will there be closure for South Yorkshire Police force? Will it be when somebody ends up going before the courts for what they have done wrong, being charged, prosecuted and convicted? Because you talked about prosecution in that Newsnight interview that you did on the day of the publication of the Panel; is that what represents closure for South Yorkshire, or if not, what does?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: If it is shown from the inquiry that people have broken the law and they are prosecuted, that may represent closure. But it is not possible to say that there is one unique thing that will represent closure for the different people who are involved in the Hillsborough disaster. For example, if I was a member of one of the families who had lost someone I am not sure whether closure would ever be possible. If I was an officer who was there and traumatised, likewise I might find it very difficult to get over it. What you describe could be one element of it, but I don’t think it is the only element.

 

Q35 Chair: In respect of your colleague in West Yorkshire, are you quite happy with the way matters are proceeding on that? He has been referred to the IPCC, and he has announced his retirement.

 

Chief Constable Crompton: It is a matter for the West Yorkshire Police Authority and Sir Norman. It is entirely separate from South Yorkshire.

 

Q36 Chair: Thank you. The Committee will be coming back to you from time to time to monitor this situation. Select Committee has never had an inquiry into Hillsborough and there is no point in having another inquiry into what happened, but we are very concerned about the process that goes on from here. With your co-operation we will be kept informed and we will keep Parliament informed.

 

Mr Crompton: I am happy to co-operate.

 

Chair: Thank you.

 

Q37 Nicola Blackwood: I just wanted to ask one question about what your policy is going to be in terms of co-operating with the IPCC investigation. One of the ongoing problems that has come before this Committee is public confidence in IPCC investigations, and in particular the fact that the IPCC cannot compel officers to give interviews where they have been involved in a death or a serious injury, except in cases where a criminal or misconduct offence is suspected. Are you going to grant the IPCC interviews or not, in this case, given the high level of public concern and the history associated with this case?

 

Chief Constable Crompton: The short answer is that even if I was to grant an interview, I cannot force somebody to say something if they are unwilling to do so.

 

Nicola Blackwood: No, but even if somebody said, "No comment," that still acts as evidence in cases, as you know from your own experience.

 

Chief Constable Crompton: In truth, it is the first time it has been raised with me. I will take that one away and talk it through with the IPCC who I am in regular dialogue with.

 

Nicola Blackwood: Okay; thank you.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/uc622-i/uc62201.htm

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