On 28 April 1989, Lord Justice Taylor held a preliminary hearing for the Inquiry at Sheffield Town Hall. The hearing set out his expectations for the Inquiry. Lord Justice Taylor stated: “I emphasise that during the first phase of the Inquiry what is required is factual evidence as opposed to mere comment or non-expert opinion.”
The following day, ACC Jones, who was leading WMP’s work for the Taylor Inquiry, wrote to CC Wright that he had “been directed by Lord Justice Taylor to invite senior police officers who were involved at Hillsborough on Saturday 15 April 1989 to submit, in writing their recollection of the events prior to and during the match.” He listed six officers from whom recollections were sought. He did not specify that comment or opinion was not required.
SYP swiftly conveyed this request to its lawyers. A handwritten file note from Hammond Suddards indicated that Ch Supt Wain phoned the same day and explained the development. After further conversations between DCC Hayes and Mr Metcalf, on 2 May, Mr Metcalf met with some of the senior officers to review their accounts. In a short note of the meeting, Mr Metcalf recorded: “I made various suggestions for alterations to their statements, the principal change being that in respect of ACC Jackson, who had not included any of the details of the planning of the match.”
In what appears to be a direct consequence, ACC Jackson submitted a ten-page account, plus an appendix. This was shared with WMP, who recorded it as his statement.
On 7 May, ACC Jones wrote to CC Wright again, advising him that the Taylor Inquiry had now requested written recollections from a large number of SYP officers, to be drafted in line with “the same criteria as for the senior officers before.” The following day, Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Ross of WMP (DCI Ross) sent Ch Supt Denton a list of 122 SYP officers from whom recollections were required.
According to a Hammond Suddards attendance note, Ch Supt Wain and Ch Supt Denton jointly telephoned Hammond Suddards and spoke to Miss Norcliffe about WMP’s request. She noted they were “concerned” as some of the accounts they already had from officers on the list “go beyond mere fact.” According to the note, Ms Norcliffe advised them that “as the statements already taken were provided for Legal Advisors, this would not necessarily be a problem, that all the statements would have te [sic] be vetted before release and consents from all Officers would be required.”
Having confirmed this with Mr Metcalf, she then telephoned Ch Supt Wain back to advise him that the best course of action would be “for us to read through every single statement requested that we already had, to ok the ones that should be released and to suggest alterations possibly to others.”
This was therefore the third point at which the legal team suggested that officers’ accounts might need to be amended. Again, there was no recorded response from SYP.
On 9 May, Ch Supt Denton sent Mr Metcalf a bundle of accounts, with the specific acknowledgement: “You agreed to vet the initial batch of those statements.” The decision to send accounts to Hammond Suddards for vetting was communicated promptly within the SYP teams involved in the collection of evidence. On 10 May, Ch Supt Wain instructed the SYP MIR that “nothing currently in our possession will be released to W/Mids until it has been vetted by our legal representatives.”
It is important to acknowledge that WMP’s request meant that officer accounts would now be used for a very different purpose: whereas SYP had asked for them to inform its production of a proof of evidence for the Taylor Inquiry, they were now being treated as primary evidence by another police force.
