To investigate the allegations, the IOPC began by taking statements from family members and others about what they had experienced and why they thought this could be a result of police surveillance. The issues most commonly cited related to problems with telephone lines.
Twenty-one of the complainants who wrote to the IOPC reported hearing noises, such as clicks on the line, when they made or received telephone calls at home. Some also said they often experienced a delay at the start of a call. All suspected these noises and interruptions were the result of telephone interception carried out by, or at the instruction of, the police.
In some cases, the noises continued even after the individuals had moved home or changed telephone provider.
One complainant said that, in one property he lived in, he only heard these noises when speaking to another individual who wrote to the IOPC.
One woman only heard noises when she called her mother, who was a prominent member of one of the campaign and support groups related to the disaster. Her concern was not about her own telephone line being intercepted, but rather her mother’s.
Four people referred to a specific crossed-line incident, which meant two individuals overheard, during a call between them, the separate telephone conversation of a third complainant. All already knew each other as a consequence of the disaster.
Eight further individuals referred to hearing other voices on the line. Three of these (including two who referred to calls made from a public phone box near SYP HQ) specifically mentioned hearing sounds that were like police radio or other police conversations.
In some cases, family members had some form of contact with the police, which they believed occurred as a result of the police hearing something they had said in a phone conversation.
Understandably, those reporting the issues were often not able to state which police force, or forces, could have been involved. There was also no information on surveillance in the archives, or in the material disclosed to the HIP.
Five complaints referred to burglaries in Merseyside, as well as the interception of communications. Two of these incidents were at the Hillsborough Centre—set up to provide support to families and supporters who had been at the match—and two at the Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC) shop. A further two incidents, covered by the same complaint, took place at the home of a member of the HJC. Because in each case material that was stolen or damaged involved information relating to the disaster and the work of campaign and/or support groups, the complainants raised the possibility that the police were involved in the burglaries. This was on the basis that they felt only the police would have found the information of value.
The IOPC secured the support of the Home Secretary to ask all police forces to search for any records of surveillance related to family members of those who died, or to members of campaign and support groups related to the disaster, and to provide those records to the IOPC. No records were found. Again with the support of the Home Secretary, the IOPC then asked forces for all information they held related to the disaster, as a means of checking that nothing had been overlooked. Still no relevant information was provided.
While this could indicate that there had been no authorised police surveillance of the individuals, it could also mean that the records had been (correctly) destroyed after they had been held for the permitted period.
In relation to telephone surveillance, the legal framework meant that, at the time the IOPC made this request, records should have existed of every lawful police interception of telephone communications since 2000, and of every time a police force applied to the Home Secretary to intercept telephone communications. However, the longstanding government policy is that the Home Secretary will neither confirm nor deny whether any individual is the subject of telephone interception.
Instead, families were directed to contact the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), an independent public body which oversees complaints about the use of intrusive powers such as phone-tapping by intelligence services, law enforcement agencies and public authorities. It has the authority to view the details held by the Home Office of all authorisations granted to intercept telephone communications and to award damages to complainants.
