2. What legal advice has the Counsel General provided to the Welsh Government on how it can support the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign? OQ58831

Thank you for the question. I wrote to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Lord Bellamy, in August of this year, to call for full disclosure from public bodies during public inquiries or criminal proceedings. I believe that a Hillsborough law would benefit the demand for a public inquiry into events at Orgreave.

Can I thank the Counsel General for that answer and his commitment to a Hillsborough law, something that I've used my time in questions to the Counsel General to highlight, and highlight other areas of injustice? Because it is far too hard for working-class people in the United Kingdom and in Wales to access justice. The Orgreave miners, including many from Wales, were victims of a gross injustice. On the day, many were victims of brutal and sustained unlawful assault, and what happened subsequently is a real stain on the British legal system. Counsel General, these former miners deserve justice, and it behoves all of us who care about justice to keep raising this matter. Can I seek your assurance that you, as Counsel General, and Welsh Government Ministers, will take every opportunity you have to raise this with UK Government counterparts and take every opportunity to speak out and keep the flame for justice for Orgreave burning?

I thank you very much for that and for raising that. I don't know whether you're aware; I was of course one of the lawyers in the Orgreave trial and riot cases, in which we actually obtained an absolute non-committal, a 'not guilty', in respect of all 90 of the cases of persons that I was involved in, and we then actually took civil action against the police for malicious prosecution and wrongful arrest. All of those civil actions were completely successful. What was important about them and what is important about this issue is that it relates to the exercise of power by the state. And my belief is that there is evidence and there will be documentation that is yet to be disclosed that will show that the decisions taken at Orgreave—and, of course, it relates to other matters that we're aware of with regard to Hillsborough, but those matters, those decisions—were actually taken at the very highest level, at prime ministerial level. That is my belief in that, and that is my belief as to why an inquiry won't be carried out by this Government. I am very pleased that the next Labour Government has given a commitment that it will carry out an inquiry into Orgreave, that those documents will be disclosed, not because it's something of raking over history, something that happened a long time ago, but, with all abuses of power that occur by a state, it's important that those are made public and that those are dealt with in the proper way.