Durkan joins Liverpool legends in solidarity with Hillsborough 96

SDLP Foyle MP Mark Durkan meeting football legends Alan Hansen and Kenny Dalglish at Westminster this week. Mr Durkan joined Labour MP for Liverpool Walton Steve Rotheram in solidarity with the campaign for justice for the 96 victims of the 1989 Hillsborough football tragedy.

Mr Durkan has long been a supporter of the Hillsborough families.

Speaking in Westminster last year after Prime Minister David Cameron apologised on behalf of the Government for its failure to deliver justice decades ago, the local MP said: “The Prime Minister will know that Bloody Sunday families and survivors in my constituency have a profound empathy with those Hillsborough families that have struggled with grief compounded by grievance, and endured injustice, insult and indifference.

“Does the Prime Minister recognise that this report will not only mean that Hillsborough families are overcome with a sense of vindication, but that it will also provoke many other mixed and difficult emotions and issues?

“Will he ensure that relevant services are supported and supplemented to help the families and survivors of Hillsborough with those needs?”

Mr Cameron replied: “I am sure that with his experience of Bloody Sunday and the Saville inquiry, the hon. Gentleman is completely right to say that the families will need a lot of support and help as they digest what is in the report.

“The commonality, as it were, of the two things, is that a Government should not make an apology just because something bad happened some time ago.

“The apology should be in respect of the fact that there is new information that injustice took place and was allowed to lie for far too long, and that false stories were got up about what happened.

“That is why an apology is not only right, but the necessary and correct thing to do, and that is where there is common ground between the two issues raised by the hon. Gentleman.”