Hillsborough revealed a system that protects power not people, writes Shelagh Fogarty

At the time of the disaster, there was no legal duty on any of the police officers involved to tell the truth about what happened that day or what they did afterwards while statements were being altered. Senior officers put pressure on constables to change their accounts, and many did so under threats to their careers.

Yet there was no legal jeopardy for those who changed evidence, hid evidence or destroyed evidence. That is why, all these years later, nobody can be held to account in a court of law.

The court of public opinion has judged them and always will, and rightly so. What they did should steep them in shame. But shame is not justice, which is why I have spoken for so long about the need for a Hillsborough Law. It is not only about Hillsborough. It matters for the Post Office scandal, the infected blood scandal, and for every institution in this country that holds power. There has to be a legal duty of candour. There has to be real jeopardy if public bodies or private companies lie, destroy evidence or alter it to save themselves.

Every wrongdoing in the Hillsborough story happened in plain sight. The new report highlights it again. A mounted officer claimed fans had inflicted cigarette burns on his horse. It was untrue.

Officers implied that children who died had been drunk. They implied that adults had caused one another’s deaths. None of it was true. The 2016 inquests finally set the record straight, and a jury heard the evidence in full. Yet these lies survived for decades.

What still astonishes me is that within a year of the disaster, Lord Justice Taylor delivered an interim report, followed within 18 months by his full report. He did not uncover everything that would come out later, but he did establish clearly that the fans were not to blame. His findings were public. They were there in black and white. Yet the reputations of the dead, and of those who survived, were trashed for decades afterwards and still are by some.

For the families, none of today’s findings will come as a surprise, but they will cause deep hurt. Accountability and acknowledgement may sound like dry concepts, but they matter because so many of our institutions have shown themselves willing to lie, to ruin lives and to walk away without remorse. From Hillsborough to the Post Office Scandal, there are people in positions of authority who seem untouched by the harm they cause.

Ordinary people often have very little power. Where power does exist, it must be protected, and where it should exist but does not, the fight to secure it must continue.

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