The Hillsborough disaster changed British football for ever. It led to a radical overhaul of our football stadiums and the ways in which spectators were organised and treated. Wednesday's full publication of the public records relating to the disaster in which 96 people, many of them children, lost their lives, has begun a process that should change our view of football fans as much as football grounds were changed 20 years ago. No longer should it be possible for the spectre of hooliganism, drunkenness and misconduct to be attached in the public mind to the events which unfolded that day.

Now, once and for all, the rumours and suspicions influenced by tabloid stories can be seen for what they were: dreadful slurs on innocent people who had set out one Saturday morning hoping for nothing more than to see their team win an FA Cup semi-final. Now, everyone must surely realise what Merseyside has known for more than two decades. That the allegations that circulated in the hours and days after the tragedy, and which appeared most prominently in the Sun, were baseless. "The truth", as the Sun headline had it, was nothing of the sort. It was just an elaborate means by which blame could be displaced and attention diverted.

It would be a mistake to think of this in simple conspiratorial terms, and see it as a one-off. First, though it may be a particularly extreme example, it is hardly unheard of for the police to seek to divert attention from their shortcomings by having others carry the blame. In recent times, the Stephen Lawrence case, the shootings of Jean Charles de Menezes and Mark Duggan, and the events surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson all raised similar concerns.

And, although the Hillsborough families have had to wait until now for anything approaching what they might consider "the truth", we should also remember the work undertaken by Lord Justice Taylor in his inquiry into Hillsborough in the months after the disaster. Taylor was the first official figure to make it clear where responsibility for the tragedy lay, and did so in stark and uncompromising terms. His work may not have been sufficient, and his terms of reference were the main restriction, but it was an important and necessary stepping stone to where we find ourselves today. Lord Justice Leveson notwithstanding, it is less fashionable now to set up such judicial inquiries, but there are many events, such as last year's riots for example, where independent scrutiny would arguably be enormously valuable.

Third, Hillsborough ought to make us all ask why the stories that blamed fans for the crush and for many of the problems that ensued as rescue attempts were made, were not more effectively challenged. Why were others in positions of power unable or unwilling to ask the difficult questions? Yes, we now have evidence that senior government figures were misinformed by senior police officers and by others. The question that remains, however, is how closely did they question any of the police intelligence and advice they received and, indeed, how closely did they want to question it? What we should require of our political leaders is enough integrity and independence of mind always to treat the briefings they receive with a judicious scepticism. It now seems most unlikely, as many will have long assumed, that there was any such scepticism in Downing Street or cabinet in 1989. Certainly, there was enough of a sense of a closing of the ranks to make it feel that there was no appetite for full disclosure of what really took place on that Saturday afternoon.

Finally then, what Wednesday's events reinforce, is the fact that information is absolutely key to holding all public servants, including police officers, to account. The nature of the forum is important too. The Hillsborough documents reinforce the sense that inquests have long been a poor medium for revealing important information surrounding controversial deaths; the Hillsborough inquests were just one of the more egregious examples of this inadequacy. Official inquiries, as I've argued, can have an important impact and we should focus on the more successful examples in the recent past when assessing their potential. What Wednesday's events reveal, is the positive power of freely accessible information.

While the pain of the Hillsborough families will continue, it is to be hoped that the public release of documents will give some sense of the potential for justice to be done. If the process leads to greater openness in some other corners of public life, then that would indeed be a fine legacy.

• This article was amended on 13 September 2012, correcting "Lord Leveson" to "Lord Justice Leveson"