TWO of the Birmingham Six have described as a "scandal" the British government's failure to implement any of the promised reforms to the justice system five years after their release.
At a press conference yesterday at the House of Commons to mark the fifth anniversary of their freedom, Mr Patrick Hill and Mr Billy Power said that, despite the Royal Commission's recommendations that an independent body should investigate miscarriages of justice, it still had not been officially established.
The Birmingham Six - Mr Power, Mr Hill, Mr John Walker, Mr Gerry Hunter, Mr Hugh Callaghan and Mr Richard McIlkenny - were released by the Court of Appeal in 1991 after spending 17 years in prison. They were convicted of bombing two public houses in Birmingham, in which 21 people died, and were jailed for life in 1974.
Mr Chris Mullin, the Labour MP for Sunderland, who campaigned for the Six, said he felt that, apart from it being harder for police officers to "extract confessions under torture", the British judicial system had not improved following the release of the men.