Fresh inquiry will re-examine deaths of elderly patients at Gosport hospital

Police officers, nurses and coroners will be investigated as part of a fresh inquiry into the suspicious deaths of 92 elderly patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in Hampshire.

The inquiry, which is expected to last two years, will be led by the Rt Revd James Jones, the retired Bishop of Liverpool, who chaired the Hillsborough inquiry.

Last year, a long-awaited report into the scandal by Professor Richard Baker was published, a decade after it was completed. This found that an "almost routine use of opiates" had "almost certainly" shortened the lives of dozens of patients between 1988 and 2000. Since that report relatives have campaigned for a wider ranging inquiry.

Relatives are expected to welcome the inquiry's broader remit, including the role of coroners in examining patients' causes of death, and the actions of Hampshire police, who were first contacted in August 1998 by Gillian Mackenzie over the death of her mother, Gladys Richards, 91.