Full toll of lives claimed by the Hillsborough Disaster will never be known, says key investigator

Professor Phil Scraton turned down an OBE last month in protest at governments failing to seek the truth

A jury judged last year that the 96 victims of the disaster were unlawfully killed (Getty)

The academic who has done more than any individual to expose the causes and cover up of Hillsborough will state in a documentary on Tuesday night that the full number of people who died in, or as a result of, the disaster will never be known.

Professor Phil Scraton, who headed the Hillsborough Independent Panel and uncovered the process by which police officers statements were amended, told the programme, to be screened on the Welsh language channel S4C: “I can’t tell you what the real number is of people who died as a direct consequence of what they endured at Hillsborough, or after Hillsborough.”

In April last year, a jury in the inquests into the death of 96 Liverpool fans at the Hillsborough stadium decided that they had been unlawfully killed. The jury judged it was police failures at the stadium in April 1989 that led to the deaths, and that the behaviour of the Liverpool fans had not contributed.

But the full psychological toll – possibly exacerbated by the long struggle for transparency – is unknown and never will be established. One supporter, Stephen Whittle, killed himself 22 years after the fatal crush. His father, Frank Whittle, believes that the course of events might have been different had the verdict of unlawful killing been reached years earlier. “He felt guilty at having passed his ticket on," his father said last year.

Tuesday’s documentary, Yr Hunllef Hir (‘The Long Nightmare’), examines the psychological toll through the eyes of producer and presenter Dylan Llewelyn, who was at Hillsborough and 23 years old at the time.

Llewelyn speaks to the former Liverpool players Ian Rush and John Barnes, among others. Rush tells the programme makers that the day of the tragedy, when he started the FA Cup match against Nottingham Forest which was abandoned, has never left him – but it is more for those who carry the emotional consequences of having lost relatives.

Ian Rush is one of the players present in 28 years ago who recalls the disaster during the documentary (Getty)

“You have the scars for the rest of your life,” Rush said. “Because it’s something you have seen and something that will always be there. “It’s [28] years and nobody has given up [trying to understand the causes] for a day or a month. [Now we understand more] but it’s not going to bring back their loved ones.”

Llewellyn speaks to many of those affected, including Barry Devonside who lost his son Chris,18, and Julie Fallon who lost her brother Andrew, aged 23, in the tragedy.

"I miss him every single day, I think about him morning, noon and night and there's no way that their lives should have been snuffed out the way that they were" said Devonside. "Chris was everything to Jackie and I, and we as a family will never get over this loss."

Prof Scraton turned down an OBE earlier this month, in protest at successive governments failing to seek the truth about the tragedy.

Hillsborough: Yr Hunllef Hir, Tuesday, January 24, 9.30pm, S4C. English subtitles available.