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UKIP leader Paul Nuttal has responded to allegations that he lied about being at Hillsborough by saying anyone making such a suggestion is the “scum of the earth”.

Mr Nuttall, who at the time of the disaster was a 12-year-old schoolboy at Savio high school in Bootle , is believed to have first publicly made the claim that he was present on the day that 96 fans died at the FA Cup semi final in a letter to the Liverpool Daily Post in 2010.

Last year in a BBC TV interview he said he was in the overcrowded Leppings Lane end with his father and two uncles during the disaster.

In the interview he said he thought people “should carry the can for their actions”.

In a Guardian story tonight Hillsborough campaigner Margaret Aspinall was quoted as saying: “I haven’t heard anything about him being at the match. Has he given a statement to the police, who have said they want to hear from everyone who was there? He can’t say he hasn’t heard that the police want to take statements from everyone who was in the Leppings Lane, as it’s been all over local and national media.”

(Image: Joe Giddens/PA Wire)

Others who queried Mr Nuttall’s version of events include former Labour MP Joe Benton, who Mr Nuttall stood against for UKIP in the 2005 and 2010 general elections, and the current Labour MP, Peter Dowd, who said that as far as he was aware, Mr Nuttall had not mentioned Hillsborough when he stood in the 2015 general election.

An unnamed former teacher of Mr Nuttall’s at Savio is said to have told The Guardian that the school was aware of the boys who had been at Hillsborough so they could help them during that difficult period and he could not recall Mr Nuttall’s name being among them.

Another unnamed source, said to be a fellow pupil at the school and a “friend for decades” is quoted as saying that over 25 years the UKIP leader, from Bootle, had “never spoken” about Hillsborough.

None of the statements carried in the Guardian story proved that Mr Nuttall was not at Hillsborough.

Mr Nuttall, who said in an interview with the Daily Express last weekend that he did not like to speak about the disaster, declined to speak to the Guardian directly, but in a statement issued by the party it was suggested that he was the victim of a smear campaign sanctioned by the Labour party. He is contesting the Stoke Central By-Election on February 23.

(Image: Anna Gowthorpe/PA Wire)

The statement added any claim he was not at Hillsborough was “totally false and highly defamatory”.

It added: “Paul was indeed at Hillsborough. He attended the match with his father and other family members. For political opponents to suggest otherwise and for left-wing media organisations to promote such claims constitutes a new low for the Labour party and its associates.”

UKIP also supplied statements from Mr Nuttall’s father and a UKIP official, both of whom said he was at the disaster and they were there with him.

The Liverpool ECHO approached UKIP for a comment and were sent the following statement:

“Paul has been aware for some time of a smear campaign against him sanctioned by senior figures in the Labour Party and spoke about this in an interview with the Sunday Express last week.

“One aspect of this is the claim that he was not at the Hillsborough disaster. This is totally false and highly defamatory.

“Paul was indeed at Hillsborough. He attended the match with his father and other family members. For political opponents to suggest otherwise and for left-wing media organisations to promote such claims constitutes a new low for the Labour Party and its associates.

“Paul will not allow such disgusting attacks, which have already caused great distress to his family, to deflect him from his campaign to be elected MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central and trusts that the people of Stoke and the British public in general will share in his disgust that the Labour Party should sink to such a level.”