Britain’s most senior police officer gave a misleading account about the evidence he provided following the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, but he remains innocent of any misconduct, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has found.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, who has announced he will retire in February, was cleared by the IPCC following a complaint about statements he made in 2012 and 2013.

The IPCC’s report, which assessed the complaint by the family of one of 96 people killed in the disaster, says Hogan-Howe’s statements were misleading and that he should arguably have been “more diligent”.

Met chief verdict is third blow to Hillsborough families' faith in IPCC Read more

But the police watchdog concluded he made “an unfortunate mistake” and cleared him of misconduct.

The watchdog’s report upholds the revelation, reported by the Observer in November 2013, that Hogan-Howe had not, as he claimed at the time, made a statement to investigators or to the official Taylor inquiry about his actions on the night of the disaster.

Hogan-Howe also claimed after the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP) in 2012 that following the disaster, when he was an inspector in the South Yorkshire police, he was asked to add to his statement. That claim was also false.

After several inquiries to the Metropolitan police by the Observer in 2013, the force finally accepted that Hogan-Howe had never made a statement to Taylor. The force stated that when Hogan-Howe had said that, he had been “confused”.

The IPCC has taken three years to publish its report following the complaint made by the family of Adam Spearritt, who was 14 when he died at Hillsborough.



It concluded: “Whilst it is arguable that Bernard Hogan-Howe should have been more diligent and cautious in terms of responding to press inquiries, the evidence of [his press officers] tend to support [his] account that an unfortunate mistake was made.”

Hogan-Howe was on weekend leave in Sheffield from a secondment at Oxford University on 15 April 1989, when the lethal crush happened at Hillsborough.

As the report confirms, he later reported for duty and took charge of police operations at the Hillsborough boys’ club, a rundown facility where police had told anxious families to wait for news of missing relatives.

Bereaved families remember as particularly traumatic the bleak, spartan conditions at the boys’ club, and lack of police organisation and information during their long wait for news. Hours after the disaster, they were eventually taken to identify their dead relatives in the gymnasium at the Hillsborough football ground.

Stephen Lowe, then the archdeacon of Sheffield, who organised members of the clergy to be with families at the boys’ club, has recalled that the operation was “utter chaos, a shambles”, and criticised the police, including Hogan-Howe, for being defensive and not communicating sympathetically with families.

The operation at the boys’ club, including Hogan-Howe’s role there, the identification process, which is now notorious for its lack of sensitivity, and immediate police questioning of traumatised families about whether their deceased relatives had been drinking, remains subject to the continuing IPCC criminal investigation into the Hillsborough aftermath.

The IPCC has said it intends to send files on its investigation into the alleged cover-up by South Yorkshire police of its failures, and the other criminal investigation into the cause of the 96 deaths, to the Crown Prosecution Service in the new year.

The original complaint about Hogan-Howe was made by Paul Spearritt, Adam’s younger brother. The Spearritt family have said they were further traumatised by the fact that in the boys’ club, police read Adam’s name in a list of people who were alive and well, raising false hopes which were then dashed.

In 1990, after the family raised that concern, Hogan-Howe was asked by a police officer whether he had anything to “add to the inquiry”, but he only ever gave cursory details of his duties in a telephone conversation in May 1990.

Then, after the HIP report was published in September 2012, he said publicly that he had made a full statement at the time to the Taylor inquiry, and refused to add to it when asked by police. That account turned out to be untrue.

Paul Spearritt told the Guardian that the family accepted people could make mistakes, but it was “careless” of Hogan-Howe, in the position of Metropolitan police commissioner, to make such a mistake about the evidence he gave after an event as devastating as the Hillsborough disaster. Spearritt said the IPCC report failed to address that convincingly, and it remained baffling to the family that Hogan-Howe did not make a full statement at the time about the operation at the boys’ club.

“I still think it strange that he didn’t make a proper statement,” he said. “It has always been difficult to have any confidence in the IPCC, and nothing they have done since the new investigation started has filled anyone with much confidence.”

Hogan-Howe said: “I am pleased that this independent investigation has concluded that I did nothing wrong, in relation to both statements I gave to the media and my conduct on the day of the disaster.

“Importantly, I hope that this investigation provides some comfort to the family of Adam Spearritt, who died that tragic day.

“When I served as the chief constable of Merseyside I had a warm relationship with the people of Liverpool and genuinely hope that today’s conclusion helps that to continue long into the future.”