Page 15 - When Things Go Wrong

1.11 In a 2018 submission, INQUEST – the leading charity on State-related deaths
and their investigation – described the barriers bereaved families face in
securing effective participation:

Bereaved relatives’ trauma is often compounded by a systematic
disregard for their needs and concerns, and the lack of information they
are given about their legal rights in these processes. Families with whom
we work, describe their shock at the adversarial, unsympathetic and
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defensive approaches deployed by corporate and state bodies.
1.12 This finding chimes with two reports published in 2017: the Right Honourable
Dame Elish Angiolini DBE QC’s Report of the Independent Review of Deaths
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and Serious Incidents in Police Custody and the Right Reverend Bishop
James Jones KBE’s ‘The patronising disposition of unaccountable power’: A
report to ensure the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families is not
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repeated (“Patronising Disposition”). Both reports highlighted the
difficulties faced by families in securing specialist advice on their rights; in
gaining access to full and frank disclosure; in accessing public funding for
legal representation at inquests; and in exposure to inappropriate, aggressive
questioning during hearings.
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1.13 The barriers to effective participation identified by Dame Elish Angiolini and
Bishop James Jones were reiterated by the bereaved people and survivors to
whom we spoke at the scoping stage of our work. Institutional defensiveness
was raised consistently: one consultee described the public sector response to
the Grenfell Tower fire as an “impenetrable wall”. Yet this criticism was
levelled not just at the behaviour of State core participants, but at the very
architecture of the justice system. The lack of diversity in the Inquiry panel;

14 INQUEST, ‘INQUEST response to the Ministry of Justice Consultation on establishing an
Independent Public Advocate’, December 2018, p. 3.
15 The Rt Hon Dame Elish Angiolini DBE QC, Report of the Independent Review of Deaths and Serious
Incidents in Police Custody (2017).
16 The Rt Rev Bishop James Jones KBE, ‘The patronising disposition of unaccountable power’: A report
to ensure the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families is not repeated (HC 511, 2017).

17 We are indebted to the authors of both reports for providing such helpful material to draw upon and
for their constructive engagement with this project.
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