Report published next week is expected to reveal widespread failures by South Yorkshire police over 1989 disaster
Margaret Aspinall, whose son James died at Hillsborough, said families, survivors and Liverpool supporters should receive an apology. Photograph: John Giles/PA Archive/Press Association
David Cameron is being urged to issue a public apology to the families of the 96 people who died in the Hillsborough football stadium disaster as an independent report, to be published on Wednesday, is expected to expose widespread failures by South Yorkshire police and other public bodies.
The families, who have protested for years at the way legal processes were conducted after the disaster, expect the report to show conclusively that police refused to accept responsibility for the disaster and instead falsely claimed drunk and ticketless supporters were to blame.
The inquest into the deaths of Liverpool fans at the Sheffield ground imposed a cut-off of 3.15pm on the day of the disaster – 15 April 1989 – beyond which no evidence was taken. As a result, the response of the emergency services to the unfolding disaster has not been publicly examined until now. The families believe the emergency operation was chaotic and inadequate, as South Yorkshire police have subsequently admitted, and they expect the report to document this for the first time.
Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said the families, survivors of the disaster, Liverpool football supporters and the wider Liverpool public should receive an apology from the prime minister for the years of false accusations which she argued amounted to a coverup. Cameron's apology in 2010 for the security services' and other official failures exposed by the Saville report into the Bloody Sunday violence in Derry in 1972 was profoundly significant to the victims' families, and Aspinall sees that as a model for the response to the Hillsborough report.
"We will accept nothing short of a full apology from the prime minister for the suffering and heartache the families have been put through for 23 years," said Aspinall, whose son, James, then 18, died at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
"We lost our loved ones because of negligence by the police and others, but they refused to accept responsibility and instead tried to cover up and blame the supporters themselves. For all these years the families have been fighting, together with survivors and others who have stood with us, and finally we expect the truth to come out with this report."
After the 20th anniversary of the disaster, in 2009, the then Labour ministers Andy Burnham and Maria Eagle called for all documents relating to Hillsborough to be published.
An independent panel of experts was appointed, chaired by James Jones, the bishop of Liverpool, to produce a report explaining what the full disclosure added to public understanding of the disaster.
The panel has examined more than 450,000 internal documents held by the police, the ambulance service, Sheffield Wednesday football club, the coroner's office and other bodies, which will be available online with the report on Wednesday.
The families have protested for years against the legal processes following the disaster, which produced an inquest verdict of accidental death, and no sanctions against any individual or body.
Accusations by the police that the disaster was caused by drunk and ticketless supporters were widely carried in the media at the time, most notably in the Sun, and were presented as the police's official case to the public inquiry and inquest.
The families expect Wednesday's report by the Hillsborough Independent Panel to dispel those claims conclusively, and show in detail that South Yorkshire police mounted a deliberate operation after the disaster to blame the fans.
Burnham and Eagle, now shadow ministers, and two other Merseyside MPs, Steve Rotheram and Derek Twigg, have joined Aspinall in arguing that if the report vindicates the families' case, David Cameron should make a formal apology.
"We were all impressed with the way David Cameron brought reconciliation to the people of Derry through his handing of the Bloody Sunday report when it was delivered," Burnham said. "We now call on him to show the same leadership for Liverpool, and help heal the deep wounds of Hillsborough."
Cameron is expected to make a statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday in response to the report's publication, but Downing Street has not yet said what form that will take.
Lord Justice Taylor's official report into Hillsborough in 1990 found that police mismanagement was the prime cause of the disaster, together with deficiencies by the host club, Sheffield Wednesday, and failures by Sheffield city council, which was responsible for certifying the ground's safety. All three paid damages to the families to settle a civil action for negligence, yet the police repeated to the subsequent inquest their case that drunken fans had caused the disaster. The 3.15pm cut-off meant not only that no evidence was heard about the emergency response, but also that the families have never found out how each individual victim actually died.
Aspinall said the family support group would push for a new inquest into the deaths after Wednesday's report. She was adamant in wanting the verdict of accidental death to be replaced with that of unlawful killing, and said she had never picked up the death certificate issued for her son.
The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, has already received an application for a new inquest from Anne Williams, whose then 15-year-old son, Kevin, died at Hillsborough. Grieve has said he will decide whether to grant a new inquest after the panel publishes its report.
