Hillsborough panel sees documents

The new Hillsborough panel will today examine previously unseen files on the tragedy for the first time.

The committee is due to reconvene in Sheffield, where they will be introduced to South Yorkshire police's Chief Constable, Meredydd Hughes.

The panellists, led by the Bishop of Liverpool, will sit until 2012, when a report chronicling their findings will be written.

The group will convene every month and a system will be devised to release information to the 96 families before it is placed in the public domain.

The panellists are Professor Phil Scraton, author of Hillsborough book The Truth; Katy Jones, a TV producer behind the McGovern drama-documentary on the disaster; Peter Sissons, the Liverpool-born newsreader; Paul Leighton CBE, former Deputy Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland; Dr Bill Kirkup CBE, former associate medical director at the Department of Health; Christine Gifford, a member of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Council on Public Sector Information; and Sarah Tyacke, former chief executive of the National Archives.