Parliament will debate the issues around the release of cabinet minutes relating to the Hillsborough tragedy next month, it has been confirmed, after an e-petition calling for their release reached more than 138,000 signatures.

The government had promised to put forward for debate any petition that reached more than 100,000 signatures and the backbench business committee has now scheduled a half-day debate for 17 October, with a vote on a motion if necessary.

The petition had called for the immediate release of the cabinet papers, seen as potentially significant in revealing the approach taken by the Thatcher administration to the disaster, as decreed by the information commissioner following a Freedom of Information Act request by the BBC.

After the petition reached 100,000 signatures, supported by a Twitter campaign, the government was obliged to make its position clear and confirm that it was committed to the publication of the documents.

It said the papers would be released after the Hillsborough Independent Panel set up by the previous government to examine the full circumstances of the disaster, with access to previously unseen documents, had delivered its report next spring.

"The government is happy for all the papers to be released as soon as the panel so decides, in consultation with the families. We expect them to be shared with the Hillsborough families first and then to the wider public," it said last month in response to the campaign.

The scheduling of the debate was welcomed by Margaret Aspinall, who lost her son James in the disaster and is chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group. "It's another good piece of the jigsaw that is coming together. It's good that this will all be aired in parliament," she said.

But she reiterated that the preferred way forward was for the documents to be considered first in context by the Hillsborough Independent Panel, due to report next spring, and then released to the families of the 96 victims before being made public.

"The best way forward is for the panel to go through it all and then to inform the families and then the public. We have to trust the process," she said.

The families hope that the report, which will draw on thousands of unreleased documents, will shed light on the many unanswered questions still surrounding the 1989 disaster and its aftermath.