PM welcomes Hillsborough Law campaigners to Downing Street

The Prime Minister today met Hillsborough Law campaigners and other partners in Downing Street. 

He said: 

I wanted to have you here in the garden so that I could say thank you to you for all that you've done in the individual cases and issues and campaigns and injustices that you have pursued. For all you've done to shape me and make me who I am. in terms of the way I try to do my business. I'm not pretending for a moment, by the way, that I don't get anything wrong, or that no politicians get things wrong, that parliament get things wrong, political parties don't get things wrong, they do. The question is, how do you respond to that? What do you actually do about that?

And so from the bottom of my heart, thank you to all of you for being part of that journey with me. And I often say that when I meet people that they can put their fingerprints on what we do in government. And the fingerprints of people in this garden are all over some of the really important things that we've done in government, absolutely all over the place. I can't go through all the examples, I just want to pick out a few if you will allow me to.

We've got Nour Norris here. Her niece, Raneem, and her sister, Khoala, were murdered in a domestic violence situation where the police didn't respond appropriately to 999 calls. They were murdered by Raneem's ex-partner, and Nour has had to listen to the tapes of the calls made to the police that weren't taken seriously enough. But had they been taken seriously enough, would undoubtedly have saved lives. 

Nour, what you did then was, like so many people here, you decided to campaign, notwithstanding the grief, to change the law. And we now have Raneem's Law: independent advisors in the room on 999 calls who can give advice on domestic abuse. This will save lives for many people in the future. And that's the change that this makes. 

We've got Figen Murray whose son Martyn was tragically killed in the Manchester Arena terrorist attack in 2017. And Figen, you and I met a number of times and you were determined that we were going to change the law to require events to have security and emergency protocols against the threat of terrorism. 

It is amazing that to think that those weren't in place before. Now they are, because we've got Martyn's Law in place and that means again that you and other people in this garden have been able to turn personal tragedy and remarkable grief into something that's going to affect other people for the rest of their lives and will save lives. 

And then we've got Pooja whose son Ronan was killed with a ninja sword. Pooja I remember we first met in a cafe at the back of Euston Station. I wasn't that grand in those days, I was just the MP for Holborn and St Pancras. I wasn't even your MP. But somebody said you need to hear what Pooja's got to say. 

So we went to a cafe at the back of Euston Station and you told me what had happened to your son. And again, my response was to listen to that and say we're going to work on this, and we're going to work on it together. And if I remember right, he had just finished his GCSEs, a young boy of 16. 

And Ronan's Law now is law. It bans ninja swords and tackles the online sale of knives. And if you read the details of this case they're horrific in terms of the availability of knives online - I couldn't believe it. All the indifference of the shops that were selling them. Because it's not as if you didn't say to them, What an earth was happening? How did you manage to put these knives in the post? How did they go to what was in fact a teenage perpetrator and nobody checked?  And they were just indifferent. And they were asked, are you going to change your practice? They said no, they haven't done anything wrong. Shocking. Absolutely shocking. Absolutely shocking. And you've been a brilliant partner on our coalition to halve knife crime within a decade. 

And the courage that so many of you have shown - the names that are literally on the legislation that now will protect other people. And all of that has been done by people in this garden and the brilliant organisations and campaigns that sit behind them.

The social media plan for under 16s. It's deeply popular, really important, very important, but that wouldn't have happened without groups like Smartphone Free Childhood and others. And again, one of the most moving days was sitting in the room just up there with some of the parents who had lost children to the abuse, the fear, and the threat that come with social media and online harms. 

We couldn't have delivered Breakfast Clubs without Civil Society partners like Magic Breakfast. What a difference that's making, stopping children from starting the school day too hungry to learn. 

We couldn't have delivered a generation of change in school food standards without the partnership with Civil Society. Our Civil Society Covenant is something I'm really pleased about and thank you all the people here who are part of that Civil Society Covenant. 

Civil Society which, in my view, for 14 long years was asked to do all the hard yards without any of the funding or the recognition and to have a covenant now where the government sits alongside Civil Society. It's a huge difference, so thank you to all of those involved in that. 

And on our new approach to social investment, we've got Dame Elizabeth Corley here with us this afternoon. 

And we could never have redeveloped the Crucible Theatre, the snooker in Sheffield, without a partnership with Civil Society - what an amazing day that was. 

And then of course, today, we finally have the Hillsborough Law. And we've got Margaret, Sue, and Charlotte here with us. This has been a long journey, a very long journey. I'm going to go from here and I'm going to open and close the third reading of the Hillsborough Law and proudly watch as it gets voted in as legislation. And we'll get Royal Assent in due course. Thank you, too, for what you have done over so many years.

But again, this is a journey that didn't start when I was Prime Minister, it started many years ago when I was DPP. We first met in that capacity when we were making decisions about whether an inquest or an investigation should come first, and I wasn't prepared to make that decision or constitute that decision as the Chief Prosecutor until I'd met the families and heard what they had to say about it. 

And I remember that profoundly. It had a real impact on me. I was just making one small decision at that stage. And again, I stayed with it. We've promised it. We promised it in opposition. We promised to deliver it in government. You held our feet to the fire many times. And quite right too.

The fact that I'm going to go from here and stand at the dispatch box in the House of Commons as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and open and shut and then vote on the third reading of the Hillsborough Law is fantastically important to me but most importantly to you because your courage and strength over so many years has been utterly breathtaking.

And frankly, so many of these stories are the same pattern. An injustice, a terrible thing happens; there's loss and grief that's unimaginable and what is the state doing? It makes it harder for people to get to the truth. It doesn't tell the truth. It hides it. It circles the wagon. It does all the things that it shouldn't do and then piles further injustice upon injustice. It happens in so many cases. And this law is therefore about breaking that structural mould. 

And it's not about a particular individual injustice. It's about breaking the structural mould, making sure that the state is honest and transparent. That people have to tell the truth.&nbp;

You might think that's a given, but it's not. And so having the Duty of Candour is hugely important. Along with some of the changes to the inquest that we're making at the same time which are really, really important as well. 

And, what you have done, what the whole campaign has done has been really, really significant. And again, as I've said to you, the difference this will make to people that you will never meet is incredible. People whose lives will be different and better protected. And they'll be there not just this year, next year, in the next election. They'll be there for decades, as all these bills will be, for decades, to protect people, generation to generation, people none of us will have known, but whose lives will be bettered and better protected because of the work that you have done. So thank you for that. 

And when I say Hillsborough, I think it is important for me just to broaden this out, because alongside Hillsborough, you've got the Grenfell Fire. Windrush, the grooming gangs, the Horizon scandal. Time and again, the same pattern of behaviour.

And I'm sorry, there's a bit of me that feels that some have seen injustice because of who the victims are. The disregarded, the overlooked, the people that the state doesn't really want to care about. I profoundly believe that if there had been slightly different people involved that there would have been a different reaction at the time. 

And so this is a fight that is about making sure everybody is seen and everybody is heard wherever they are, wherever they come from, and that everybody can get justice. 

I could probably stand here for hours by the way going through all the individuals, and I hope this gives you a sense of how much this has impacted me because I remember all these stories because they matter to me, they've impacted who I am and the way I do my business. 

So that's why I wanted to gather you here to say thank you to you. I leave on Monday with good grace. I'm very pleased I've had the privilege of being Prime Minister. I'm pleased to have delivered on the promises that are made to many people in this garden. And I'll make this last promise, which is I will stand with you and walk with you, as long as I've got breath in my body.