A Hillsborough campaigner said she doesn't accept police apologies following the publication of a report where senior officers admitted "profoundly failing" the families.
Lou Brookes, whose brother Andrew was one of the 97 victims of the tragedy, told the ECHO she did not accept the apologies as they were just "promises on a piece of paper". Leaders from the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs' Council appeared before the media this morning, Tuesday, January 31 to "apologise on behalf of policing" for failures regarding the disaster at the Sheffield Wednesday ground in April 1989.
Chief Constable Andy Marsh, College of Policing CEO, and Martin Hewitt, National Police Chiefs' Council Chair (NPCC), said: "Ninety-seven men, women and children were unlawfully killed. Police failures were the main cause of the tragedy and police failures have continued to blight the lives of family members ever since."
READ MORE: Police apologise for Hillsborough failures and for 'blighting lives' of families
The apology, the first since the incident nearly 34 years ago, came in a police response to the Right Reverend Bishop James Jones' 2017 Hillsborough Families Report. The senior officers said "police failures were the main cause of the tragedy and have continued to blight the lives of family members ever since".
Speaking after the release of the report, Ms Brookes told the ECHO: "I don't accept the apologies. It's taken them 34 years to apologise but at the moment it's just promises on a piece of paper - I will have to see it in action before then.
"They kept going on about a duty of candour - I think this is their way of responding to Hillsborough Law Now. This is them meeting the campaign in the middle."
In the police's report, they announced they would be looking to implement a number of different charters, codes and guidance to serving officers. Both in the published report and in the press conference, the NPCC and College of Policing officers talked heavily about their support for the concept of a "duty of candour". The officers said "candour will be critical" to police forces - and officers would commit to "putting the interest of victims and families above any other interest".
But the police report stopped short at creating legislation to help families when dealing with public authorities. A spokeswoman for the Hillsborough Law Now campaign said the group is "extremely disappointed" with the overall response.
The spokeswoman said: "The apology, while welcome, makes no reference to a change in legislation which would put an immediate stop to families battling against the state. We have long been campaigning for a Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, often referred to as the Hillsborough Law, which would create a legal duty of candour on public authorities and officials to tell the truth and proactively cooperate with official investigations and inquiries.
"It would also provide a ’toolkit’ to enforce compliance with the duty, which would both prevent obfuscation and cover-ups, and lead to much more focused and shorter inquiries, thereby saving millions of pounds of public money, and delivering swifter justice with much less stress to families and witnesses alike. Failure to comply would become a criminal offence, and the culture of denial that we have seen in other inquiries, such as Infected Blood and Grenfell, would be minimised."
West Derby MP Ian Byrne, who is a Hillsborough survivor, said the report and apology was a "very small step in the right direction but many survivors and families will feel it's far too little, far too late". He said today's events show the need for a Hillsborough Law Now, as did Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram.
Mr Rotheram said the reforms "fall far short" of what the campaign demands, and "that it has taken five-and-a-half years for this belated response, on top of the three decades the families spent battling for justice". The Metro Mayor also said it was "more disturbing" that the government had still not responded, calling it "symptomatic of the establishment’s lack of respect for grieving families".
Ms Brookes also said the wait "becomes more and more painful for the families" the longer the government delay a response. Last October, after a recommendation in Rt Revd James Jones' report, the Home Office said it had established an independent review to consider what went wrong with the original pathology report into the deaths. But there was no consultation with the bereaved families before the announcement, it emerged. At the time, the Home Office said it was committed to responding to the report "as soon as practicable".
Merseyside Police Commissioner Emily Spurrell said the Hillsborough families had been "badly let down" - and police leaders now "must strive to increase accountability and transparency within our justice system". Ms Spurrell added: "Care, compassion, openness, transparency and accountability are values which should be embedded in every layer of policing, criminal justice and government.
"That’s why I continue to support calls for the government to bring forward a Hillsborough Law Now to rebalance the scales of justice and ensure these principles are enshrined throughout our system."
Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy added: "As Chief Constable I am committed to learning from this report and leading a police force that acts without fear or favour and continues to put the best interest of victims and their families first at all times."
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