West Midlands Police's chief constable has been ordered to produce any information surrounding a claim the force may have been tipped off in advance of the Birmingham pub bombings by an IRA "mole".

A coroner made the order after hearing legal submissions on whether there was enough evidence to resume an inquest into the 21 deaths in 1974.

Louise Hunt, the senior coroner for Birmingham and Solihull, said she was adjourning proceedings because of an "evidential vacuum" around claims made by the victims' families' lawyers.

Earlier, Ashley Underwood QC representing three of families, had said: "There is reason to believe the gang of murderers had an informant in their ranks and that the police knew in advance.

"And there is reason to believe the police had sufficient time, between the telephone warnings and the first bomb going off, to evacuate - and that the emergency services could have arrived earlier - but that records about those things were falsified."

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