Bradford Stadium disaster: Former judge defends credibility of inquiry

Popplewell, who has said police should look at eight other fires allegedly connected to the then club chairman to see if there was anything "sinister", ruled in 1985 that the fire was an accident.

A new book by Martin Fletcher claims the fire at Bradford's Valley Parade stadium was one of at least nine blazes at businesses owned by or associated with the club's then chairman Stafford Heginbotham, who died in 1995.

The Guardian have published a 1989 memo from a South Yorkshire police superintendent to a superior saying that West Yorkshire police considered the Bradford inquiry a "seat of the pants affair" with a "severe pruning of witnesses in order to prevent duplicity and save time".

The inquiry lasted only seven days and shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has called on police to consider opening a new investigation, claiming the Popplewell inquiry was "conducted with undue haste".

Popplewell has responded telling The Guardian: "If we had it for 100 days the evidence wouldn't have been any different.

"We had all the evidence that was available. Except these previous fires. We had nothing else and there wasn't anything else. It was all looked into by the fire people. The actual public hearing took only five days, but we went back to the Home Office and had more evidence and we produced our inquiry in July.

"If we had wanted to have an inquiry like the Saville inquiry [into the events of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland in 1972], which lasted five years, I'm sure we could have done but we didn't see any need to."