MPs in shock as Parliament hears the facts

MPs gasped in horror as the Prime Minister read out the panel’s initial conclusions, with several moved to tears.

David Cameron offered “profound apologies” for the past failings of successive governments, while a sombre Ed Miliband issued his own apology for Labour’s failure to do more to seek out the truth during its first 10 years in power.

“It shames us as a country that it has taken 23 years to get to the truth about what happened at Hillsborough,” the Doncaster North MP said.

His Labour colleague Andy Burnham, who was responsible for forcing the inquiry into the disaster, spoke powerfully in the debate that followed.

“Finally, the full horror of Hillsborough has been revealed,” he said. “A catalogue of negligence, appalling failure and sheer mendacity; a tragedy that should have been prevented, lives that should have been saved; devastating truths made far worse, not better, by the passage of time.”