Two ex-Prime Ministers have backed renewed calls for a ‘Hillsborough law’.
Gordon Brown and Theresa May added their voices to the campaign designed to ensure fairer treatment from the UK justice system for bereaved families.
The proposed measures are aimed at preventing others from enduring the miscarriage of justice which afflicted the relatives of the Hillsborough tragedy.
Margaret Aspinall, whose teenage son James perished in the disaster, said: “What we are here today is for all of us to be united to change things.
“Because those 97 victims who died at Hillsborough, they deserve the respect and a Hillsborough law in honour of their name.
“If that does any good for the likes of other people going forward, that’s all that matters. They have not died in vain.”
Also speaking at Friday’s relaunch were those who lost loved ones in the Manchester Arena bombing and the Grenfell Tower fire, both in 2017.
Mrs May said that 97 Liverpool fans unlawfully killed at Hillsborough before the 1989 FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield had been ‘failed by the state’.
She added: “But what followed was injustice heaped on injustice.
“Years of beating their heads against a brick wall of government and the legal and judicial system which added untold pain and suffering.
“The very bodies that we expect to protect and support the public seek instead to protect themselves, and this defensive attitude means that families are all too often denied access to the truth, and with that, often denied access to justice.”
Former Labour leader Brown called for the ‘Hillsborough law’ to be enforced as a matter of urgency to avoid further families being let down by the legal system.
“No delays. No prevarications,” he insisted.
“No excuses to secure justice for you [bereaved families] and everyone who in future may face the same challenges.
“No one. No one should ever have to go through what Hillsborough families have had to live through.
“No one should be denied the truth, as you were denied the truth. No one should have had to wait so long to be heard, as you waited so long.
“No one should be kept in the dark by bureaucratic indifference and deceitful lies, like your families.”