The Memo: From the penalty box to the witness box: Can a football tragedy revolutionise legal aid?

Last month saw the culmination of a historic turnaround, as victims of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster – once dismissed as drunken hooligans in the national press – were honoured in 10 Downing Street at a meeting between their families and the PM. Indeed, Keir Starmer is offering more than just tea and sympathy; the ‘Hillsborough Law’ currently making its way through Parliament promises to level the legal playing field between ordinary citizens and the state. However, political headwinds could still complicate its passage onto the statute books. 

Decades after the fatal crush which killed 97 Liverpool fans at a cup tie in Sheffield, the disaster remains contentious chiefly because of its bitter aftermath. An initial inquiry led to no prosecutions, but subsequent investigations suggested that various officials had colluded to push blame away from the police in charge of managing the crowd, and onto the behaviour of the football supporters themselves. Following pressure from campaigners and victims’ relatives, the government’s new law offers two main proposals to prevent future cover-ups: a ‘duty of candour’ for everyone in public service (which opens them up to criminal charges if they mislead a public inquiry) and expanded funding for bereaved families challenging the state. 

In recent years, high-profile public inquiries have been a reliable source of employment for both government lawyers and the makers of ITV dramas, but not necessarily for anyone else. Now, however, justice secretary David Lammy is promising “the biggest expansion of legal aid in a generation,” with public money now available to fund private citizens’ legal representation in inquests involving the state. 

Nonetheless, before you start dreaming about which actor is going to recite your heroic courtroom monologues in the ITV dramas of the future, there are some caveats to note. The first is that Lammy’s boast looks a little less impressive when you consider that the bar for this generation’s biggest legal aid expansion has been set very low indeed; the last two decades have mainly featured cuts, and given the limited scope of the new law, it is unlikely to restore funding to its pre-2008crash levels. Therefore, making a career as a legal aid lawyer will remain financially challenging for the foreseeable future. 

The second issue is that the bill is not yet law, and there are concerns that it may still be watered down in Parliament. The difficult financial context, along with questions about the duty of candour’s enforceability, make last-minute amendments a possibility. The politics are only made stickier by the fact that the original Public Office (Accountability) Bill on which the present legislation is based was proposed in 2017 by Andy Burnham. Back then, he was a backbench MP about to quit national politics and become mayor of Manchester, but his resurgence as a potential Labour leadership challenger means that Starmer may want to avoid handing him free publicity. All sides will be keen to avoid internal Labour Party psychodrama upending efforts to build a fitting legacy for victims of tragedy and injustice, but clearly the Hillsborough saga’s final whistle has yet to be blown.