'The failures exposed in this report are unacceptable'

The families of 11 victims of the Manchester Arena Bombing tragedy have reacted to the third and final volume of the public inquiry into the attack on May 22, 2017. The inquiry concluded that there was 'a significant missed opportunity to take action' on the part of MI5 that might have prevented the murders at the Ariana Grande concert that tragic night.

Richard Scorer, principal lawyer at Slater and Gordon, who represented 11 of the families involved in the inquiry, said the failures highlighted in the report were 'unacceptable'.

One of two key pieces of intelligence about suicide bomber Salman Abedi - both of which weren't passed on to police by MI5 - 'gave rise to the real possibility of obtaining information that might have led to actions which prevented the attack', revealed the report today (Thursday, March 2).

READ MORE: LIVE: MI5 'missed significant opportunity' to stop Arena bomber, inquiry finds as Abedi's radicalisation scrutinised

Had investigations taken place, Abedi could have been stopped at Manchester Airport on his return to the UK from Libya just days before the bombing, or been followed to where the bomb was being kept.

Mr Scorer said on behalf of the families: "Today’s report has been deeply painful to read, but also eye opening. On the issue of the preventability of this attack, inevitably the report provides less information than we would have wanted. But it is now very clear that there was a failure to properly assess key intelligence about Salman Abedi; a failure to put it into proper context; and – most catastrophic of all - a delay in acting on it. As a result of these failures, at the very least, a real possibility of preventing this attack was lost. This is a devastating conclusion for us.