Three elderly patients who died at a hospital in Hampshire in the late 1990s were given inappropriate drugs for their condition which hastened their death, an inquest jury has concluded.

Another two patients were found by the jury to have been given the correct drugs but in doses that contributed to their deaths. The deaths of a further five patients were not caused by the drugs they were taking, the jury decided.

The findings at Portsmouth Coroners’ Court follow an unprecedented inquest ordered by the justice secretary, Jack Straw, into the deaths of 10 patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital between 1996 and 1999.

Mr Straw’s permission …