10. SYP’s presentation of evidence to the Taylor Inquiry

What was investigated?

The IOPC investigated:
The evidence that was put forward on behalf of SYP, or by individual officers, to the WMP investigations, Lord Justice Taylor’s Inquiry, the contribution proceedings, and the inquests, or in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, considering:

a) whether any police officer gave or produced evidence that was inaccurate, false or deliberately misleading (or was involved in attempts to do so)
b) whether such evidence contained inaccurate, misleading or irrelevant criticism of supporters’ behaviour
c) whether the ‘Wain Report’ was an accurate and complete picture of the evidence
d) whether any police officer was party to, or directed the production or selection of, evidence that was inaccurate or misleading, including irrelevant criticism of supporters’ behaviour and evidence regarding operational police tactics/actions to control supporters

This chapter focuses on the evidence presented to the Taylor Inquiry only, looking at the written submissions from SYP and the oral evidence given by individual officers.

What was found?

• The IOPC has found clear evidence the ‘Wain report’ was an internal draft of the proof of evidence SYP was required to provide to the Taylor Inquiry and was edited substantially by the legal team before submission. This is a different sequence from that proposed in the HIP Report which suggested that SYP expanded its proof of evidence to create the Wain report.

• The proof of evidence did not include any information about SYP being involved in monitoring safety in the pens, or about previous police tactics to control access to the centre pens at the Leppings Lane end by closing the central tunnel. There had been references to both of these topics in the Wain report.

• The widely reported claim that supporters deliberately burned a police horse with cigarettes outside the stadium was not true. Detailed investigation found no evidence to support the claim; when this was put to a key witness, he changed his account of what had happened.

• Before senior officers gave evidence to the Taylor Inquiry, most attended a meeting with Mr Metcalf, where those present agreed some “appropriate answers” that they could use in response to some of the expected questions. In some cases, officers then used these appropriate answers in their evidence, even where they included information the officer could not have known at the time.

• In their evidence to the Taylor Inquiry, several SYP senior officers stated, to differing degrees, that they had no knowledge of police actions to close the tunnel at the 1988 Semi-Final (or on other occasions) and that they did not see the police as having responsibility for monitoring the pens. This contradicted what some of them had said at internal meetings.

• In SYP’s closing submissions to the Taylor Inquiry, delivered on 6 July 1989, there was no mention whatsoever of past actions to close the tunnel. This submission was written by the legal team, and SYP did not have sight of it before it was submitted.

Significant new evidence

The IOPC took statements from many of those involved in the production of SYP’s proof of evidence and from several officers who gave evidence to the Taylor Inquiry. In some cases, this required multiple requests, culminating in agreement that written statements could be provided without interview, where the witness was in poor health.

As part of its investigation into the allegation that supporters had burned a police horse, the IOPC appointed an expert witness in equine health, who provided a comprehensive report.

In his Interim Report, Lord Justice Taylor made some deeply critical remarks about the quality of evidence SYP had provided to his inquiry. At paragraph 280, he commented that—with some exceptions—senior officers had been “defensive and evasive witnesses.” He then extended this criticism at paragraph 285, writing: “It is a matter of regret that at the hearing, and in their submissions, the South Yorkshire Police were not prepared to concede they were in any respect at fault in what occurred.”
Reflecting that “the police case was to blame the fans for being late and drunk, and to blame the Club for failing to monitor the pens”, he concluded: “Such an unrealistic approach gives cause for anxiety as to whether lessons have been learnt. It would have been more seemly and encouraging for the future if responsibility had been faced.”
It has since been alleged that the evidence presented by SYP and its officers was not just unrealistic, as Lord Justice Taylor described it, but deliberately misleading.
The HIP Report commented that a document known as the ‘Wain report’, because it was produced under the direction of Ch Supt Wain, “placed significant emphasis on ticketless fans, alcohol and crowd behaviour.” The HIP Report showed that such emphasis was, at best, disproportionate. It also called into question the accuracy of some of the material in the Wain report, which it suggested was SYP’s main written submission to the Taylor Inquiry.
There were also questions raised in the HIP Report about the accuracy of the oral evidence some senior officers gave to the Taylor Inquiry.
Having reviewed the material cited in the HIP Report and received a referral from SYP that acknowledged the concerns about it, the IOPC made the evidence presented by SYP one of its terms of reference. The IOPC also received some complaints, from family members of some of those who died and from some supporters who were at the game, about the written and/or oral evidence given by certain officers. These were investigated under this term of reference.
The core of this strand of the investigation was to examine the evidence that was presented by SYP to the Taylor Inquiry, from written submissions to the Inquiry transcripts, and to compare this to other evidence. That included accounts given by officers at other times, to establish if there were any significant differences, and looking at a wider range of material, including photographs and video footage from the day of the disaster, to assess if anything said in evidence was inaccurate.
To investigate the accuracy and completeness of the Wain report, the IOPC conducted a close comparison of the three different versions of the proof of evidence that were in the archived material held by the investigations. By looking at documentary evidence—in particular meeting minutes and correspondence between senior SYP officers and SYP’s appointed solicitors, Hammond Suddards—investigators were able to clarify the sequence in which the three versions were produced and gain a greater understanding of who had been involved in drafting the various iterations. This was corroborated as far as possible through interviewing the senior SYP officers involved in producing the Wain report and members of the legal team.
The evidence clearly showed that the Wain report was the second internal draft of the document that would eventually become the proof of evidence, provided to the legal team on 9 May 1989. It was 288 pages long and included extracts from 81 officers’ accounts. The section covering the events of the day of the disaster amounted to over 100 pages. It was then radically edited by the legal team, to just 122 pages, and submitted to the Taylor Inquiry on 12 May. The extracts from officers’ accounts had been removed and the section on the events of the day reduced from over 100 pages to just seven, with no details whatsoever of events beyond 12 noon.
This sequence of events is different from that set out in the HIP Report, which suggested that the substantially longer Wain report was produced after the shorter version had been submitted. This is significant because it means that, rather than ‘expanding’ its case with more information, as the HIP Report suggested, SYP (via its lawyers) actually reduced it prior to submission.
The fact that the Wain report was not presented as evidence to the Taylor Inquiry means that it is primarily of investigative interest in understanding the development over time of SYP’s proposed evidence to the Inquiry.