Hillsborough disaster: new inquest likely after damning report

Criminal prosecutions of key figures are also possible after the Hillsborough Independent Panel - which was chaired by the bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, and had unrestricted access to 450,000 documents over three years - revealed the depth of a police cover-up that swung into action the morning after the disaster.

It confirmed Lord Justice Taylor's key finding in August 1989 that the main reason for the disaster was a "failure in police control".

But it also revealed that "multiple failures" in other emergency services and public bodies contributed to the death toll. Similarly, serious failings in the inquests and reviews that followed prolonged the agony of the families of the victims.

Legal representatives for the families of the 96 victims crushed to death at the Leppings Lane end of the ground said that South Yorkshire police, Sheffield city council and Sheffield Wednesday FC could all face charges for corporate manslaughter, Kazinform quotes the Guardian.

Meanwhile, the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, will decide in the coming weeks whether to order a new inquest after the original, which recorded a verdict of accidental death, was found by the panel to be severely lacking.

"If David Cameron means what he says and justice has to follow truth, then they have a responsibility today to assess not just the question of unlawful killing but the cover-up and the perversion of the course of justice," said Michael Mansfield QC, who is acting on behalf of the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG).

The panel discovered that as many as 41 victims of the disaster on 15 April 1989 might have been saved had the emergency response been better. They also found that 116 of the 164 police statements taken afterwards were doctored to show the police in a better light, and that the South Yorkshire ambulance service had also altered statements to deflect criticism.

An earlier inquest by Dr Stefan Popper had controversially imposed a cut-off time of 3.15pm which, said the report, "led to the mistaken belief that an effective emergency services intervention could not have saved lives".

The coroner ordered that blood alcohol levels be taken for each of the deceased. The panel found that the weight placed on alcohol levels was "inappropriate and misleading" and the pattern of alcohol consumption "unremarkable".

The report says blood alcohol levels were taken from survivors for no apparent medical reason and that attempts were made to "impugn the reputation of the deceased" by checking whether they had criminal records.

"What was new and a shock was how many of them could have been saved. That is the most important thing. I'll go home and wonder if James was one of them," said Margaret Aspinall, chair of the HFSG, whose son James was 18 when he died.

"They were the liars and we were the truthful ones, we were the innocent. To hear that apology doesn't make us feel better. We will always be the losers at Hillsborough," she said.

Read more