Writing exclusively for the Liverpool ECHO, incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham looks ahead to the historic moment a new Hillsborough Law will pass through the House of Commons
Andy Burnham with Hillsborough family members Steve Kelly, Charlotte Hennessy, Margaret Aspinall and Sue Roberts
Andy Burnham with Hillsborough family members Steve Kelly, Charlotte Hennessy, Margaret Aspinall and Sue Roberts (Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
View 3 Images
Today, the Hillsborough Law returns to Parliament. After nearly four decades of fighting for justice the families, survivors and campaigners are one step closer to securing the accountability they should never have had to fight so hard to achieve.
And our country is one step closer to ending the culture of cover-up and replacing it with one built on honesty, accountability and respect for ordinary people.
We owe this moment to the Hillsborough families. For 37 years, they refused to accept a lie. They stood firm when powerful institutions closed ranks against them.
They have shown extraordinary courage, and because they never gave up, they will leave a legacy that reaches far beyond Hillsborough. They are helping to reshape the relationship between the public and the state for generations to come.
But we should never lose sight of the question at the heart of this story: why did it take so long?
I was 19 years old on the terraces at Villa Park, watching Everton in an FA Cup semi-final while, ninety miles away, the unimaginable was unfolding at Hillsborough.
Growing up between Liverpool and Manchester, what happened that day stayed with all of us. It became part of who we were.
It wasn't until twenty years later that I found the political courage to act.
Andy Burnham with Hillsborough family members Steve Kelly, Charlotte Hennessy, Margaret Aspinall and Sue Roberts
Andy Burnham with Hillsborough family members Steve Kelly, Charlotte Hennessy, Margaret Aspinall and Sue Roberts (Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
View 3 Images
On 15 April 2009, I stood on the Kop before the memorial service. One word echoed around Anfield: "Justice."
That moment changed me. It forced me to confront uncomfortable questions about how power operates in our country, and why an entire city could spend twenty years telling the truth only to be ignored.
How could Liverpool be right all along, yet dismissed for so long? How could so many voices be raised, and so few people in authority be prepared to listen?
That day set in motion the Hillsborough Independent Panel, the release of the documents, the quashing of the original inquests and, in 2016, the verdict the families had always known to be true: the 97 were unlawfully killed and the supporters were entirely innocent.
The following morning, this paper's front page captured what so many felt: At the end of a storm, there's a golden sky.
But the truth on its own is not enough. Without accountability, there can be no justice. That is why I introduced the first Hillsborough Law almost ten years ago, supported by Keir Starmer, as one of my final acts in Parliament. Its return this week is another major step towards ensuring no family has to endure what the Hillsborough families have endured.
Yet this is about more than Hillsborough alone.
The infected blood scandal. The nuclear test veterans. Grenfell. The Post Office scandal. Different tragedies, but too often the same pattern: institutions protecting themselves instead of the people they exist to serve.
Bishop James Jones described it perfectly as "the patronising disposition of unaccountable power."
Those words have stayed with me ever since. The Hillsborough Law is our chance to begin dismantling that culture once and for all.
Andy Burnham speaks on the pitch at Anfield on the 20th Anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster in 2009
Andy Burnham speaks on the pitch at Anfield on the 20th Anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster in 2009
View 3 Images
The lesson of Hillsborough goes beyond introducing a duty of candour. It asks us what kind of country we want to be. One where power is concentrated in distant institutions, or one where it is shared more fairly with the people and places those institutions are meant to serve. If an entire city could be ignored for two decades while telling the truth about the deaths of its own people, what other communities have gone unheard? Which voices have been overlooked simply because they lacked power?
For me, this has always been about changing that. It is why I believe we must continue to redistribute power, strengthen our towns and cities, and build a Britain where every community is treated with equal respect and where, in the face of injustice, nobody walks alone.
It will be a deeply moving moment to return to Parliament today as the Prime Minister honours the promise made to the Hillsborough families. It has been a long journey from that afternoon at Anfield. Throughout it all, the families have led from the front. They always have, and they always will. Today belongs to them.
I hope they know that their courage has changed this country for the better, and that future generations will be protected because they never stopped believing that justice would come.