Eric Stuart led an independent assessment into how Liverpool Council put on the Reds' title celebrations last year
Emergency Services scene on Water Street after Liverpool FC Premier League Champions parade
Emergency Services scene on Water Street after Liverpool FC Premier League Champions parade(Image: Liverpool Echo)
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The author of the independent report into the Liverpool FC title parade last May has explained why he did not investigate the carnage on Water Street. Eric Stuart was tasked by Liverpool Council to assess what happened as more than 1m people descended on the city last May to celebrate the Reds’ 20th league title victory.
Mr Stuart’s 65-page report analysed events up to 6pm on May 26th last year. Moments later, Paul Doyle, 54, ploughed his car into crowds of fans in the heart of the city centre.
He was jailed for more than 20 years. Speaking to the ECHO, Mr Stuart set out how the scope of his report had been set.
He said: “I think for those that understand the law, it’ll be quite obvious. For those that don’t, there’s a phrase that is used in law called sub judice and you can’t have an independent investigation going into examining and looking at matters that are already under criminal review.
“By the time I was brought in, Paul Doyle had been arrested, he’d been charged, and the matter was awaiting court. Anything that might interfere with that court process would be detrimental and actually could impact the court process so if I started speaking to people who were involved in that part, or asking questions about that bit, how did this happen? How did that happen? There is a risk that a clever defence lawyer might use some of that and say, I’ve tainted witnesses, because early on, we don’t know who’s going to be called as a witness to court.
“The planning team from the city authorities, the police, we don’t know who the prosecution or defence might call. If I’ve tainted them as witnesses and brought back a different memory or recollection of what actually happened, I then jeopardise that criminal investigation and that’s not something either the city authority wanted to do or I was prepared to do.”
Mr Stuart, a former Metropolitan Police officer who has assessed major events including the EURO 2020 final at Wembley, explained why his findings did not go into detail regarding the closures of roads within the city centre, given how Doyle had used his own car on the day. He said: “That’s one of those areas where you want to go there, you want to look and you want to question it, but if you do, you’re very soon getting into the risk of, well, if I’m looking at 99 road closures, then I’m potentially impinging on a future defence that Doyle might use.
Crime Scene Investigators at the scene of the Liverpool FC parade incident on Water Street
Crime Scene Investigators at the scene of the Liverpool FC parade incident on Water Street(Image: Getty Images)
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“So we had to be really careful with that and what I would say in general terms, let’s move away from Liverpool and the incident with Doyle for a minute. We have road closures at events on a daily basis, big events around the country, but ultimately those closures have to have a means by which they can be opened and closed.
“You’ve got to get the public through them on foot, you’ve got to get sometimes, a delivery vehicle, if you shut a city for a day, the consequences to the city are catastrophic and you’ve always got to have, as in this case, an ability to let ambulances, fire and police get into that area. All of these areas have to have an ability, they have to be porous, you have to be able to get people in and out.
“If you build a big steel shield wall around the whole thing, then A, you can’t get emergency vehicles in or out, but B, if anything else happened in the centre, and you had to do a very rapid and massive evacuation, a fire, an explosion, not necessarily terrorist, but just a gas explosion. If you had to do a huge evacuation at speed with a crowd that was running from an incident, and you’d put solid barriers everywhere to prevent vehicles getting in, the consequences of that would be quite significant and we saw a little bit of that when I did the review into what we call the Toronto Raptors Victory Parade back in 2019, where very heavy vehicles had been put in as hostile vehicle mitigation, and left narrow pinch points that people were having to squeeze through and get squashed as they left from an incident in the city centre in Toronto.
“We always walk a tightrope in terms of, of course we want to keep bad people out in vehicles, but we also have to let the good people in, and we do have to let pedestrians out in an emergency and en masse.”
The 54-year-old was 'completely sober' when he ploughed into more than 100 men, women and children on Water Street
The 54-year-old was 'completely sober' when he ploughed into more than 100 men, women and children on Water Street(Image: Liverpool Echo)
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The findings, released on Friday, praised the work of Liverpool Council and its partners for delivering an event that was planned in a “detailed and effective” manner and recommended the local authority “could and should” stage similar events again. Mr Stuart said: “It’s not just the council of the city, it’s the partners that work with them.
“They’ve got some really good private security and safety companies, the police, the transport providers. They’re so used to working together and doing so many big events and what I found particularly there was, unlike you find in some other cities, there’s quite a rapid churn of agencies and authorities, so people are leaving and arriving all the time.
“They seem to be a bit of a constant in Liverpool. A lot of the agencies knew each other pretty well, which is great for trust, you know what someone’s competence and capabilities are and I think that made a huge difference on the day.”
One of the main areas of concern raised by the former Met officer was the use of smoke bombs and flares in the crowd, with a prevailing sense of “no pyro, no party” being adopted by some. The report found that it was likely smoke grenades were imported from Spain, with the density described by Mr Stuart as “higher than I’ve ever seen.”
He said: “You’ll see from the report that the parade actually took a wrong turn very briefly, and within a couple of minutes the agencies, working together, managed to recover it. I was being sent images soon afterwards of this, and I thought there was a problem with the photograph that had come through, because it was literally a red screen, you couldn’t see anything in front of you at all, and if that’s the picture that drivers are facing on the parade route, and also the crowd are seeing, it looks fantastic, it looks spectacular, but perhaps not if you suffer from breathing difficulties or if you’re a young child, so we need to start seriously thinking about how we could curtail some of that.”
The report author said he had a “bigger fear” around the use of flares, with 23 injuries associated with them on the day.
Liverpool FC parade of the Champions League trophy along the Strand on the waterfront
Liverpool FC parade of the Champions League trophy along the Strand on the waterfront(Image: Gareth Jones Photographer)
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He said: “That’s bad, but none of those, as I understand it, were very serious, but every single one of those has the potential to be a life-changing, or even in the wrong circumstances, a life-ending injury, and we have to work out how we can curtail people’s behaviour. I think the bigger picture here is it’s so easy to import from overseas, online, that smoke, those flares, and then the powers around what you can do once they’re on the street are so limited, and it’s so difficult to tackle anybody who’s holding a flare in their hand, it’s dangerous for anybody approaching them, and dangerous for people around, and if that person sees, for instance, a police officer walking towards them, thinking they’re going to be in trouble, they might just throw that away, well where’s that being thrown to? Where’s it landing? Who’s on the receiving end of that? So it’s a complex issue, and I think it needs government action, some serious discussion, and then we need to think about how can we turn the tap off, how can we stop that material getting in in such volumes, except we’ll never stop it completely, but if we can reduce it significantly, then we can identify the few people that’ve got them, and go and tackle them individually.”
Mr Stuart wholeheartedly recommended that should the opportunity arise, Liverpool Council and the city’s football clubs should look to stage parade events again. Cllr Liam Robinson, leader of the city council, said the crowd expert’s recommendations would be implemented moving forward.
The author added why it was so important for people to continue to come together for celebration events like last year’s parade. He said: “Over the last few years, through budget cuts to council, through increased concern and costs in relation to counter-terrorism, we have lost thousands of events in the UK, we’ve lost a third or so of our Christmas markets, we’ve lost dozens and dozens of music festivals, the medium and smaller size music festivals, and the loss of those events means people’s lives are poorer for it.
“If we’re just going to work to earn money to eat and house ourselves, then where’s the fun in life in that? So my message was very strongly to the council and is to all councils and event organisers, these are the things that enrich our lives.
“We have to find the learning and try to do them as safely as we can, but accept that as soon as we step outside our front doors, we’re at some risk, and if we go into crowds of tens of thousands of people, those risks grow, but the fun aspect of that is so great that we have to overcome those challenges and fears and go and enjoy life as much as we can.”