Ukip MP refuses to back Farage on HIV comments

Douglas Carswell, one of Ukip’s two MPs, has refused to endorse Nigel Farage’s comments about giving foreign people with aids drugs on the NHS.

In last night’s TV debates Nigel Farage told the audience that people can “come to Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV and get retroviral drugs that cost up to £25,000 per year per patient.”

Mr Carswell was quizzed on the comments by The Telegraph but refused to back his leaders views about aids.

The Ukip MP for Clacton, whose father was the scientist who diagnosed the first cases of HIV, said it was “fair and reasonable” to make the point that “our health service should not be an international health service”.

When asked specifically about whether he agreed with the comments about HIV suffers Mr Carswell said he would not answer a “slightly slanted question” that would make him appear “at  odds with my party leader.”

However he reiterated his view that the NHS should not be an “international service.”

George Osborne, Ed Miliband, Leanne Wood and Nick Clegg have since said that Mr Farage should be “ashamed” of the comments made in the debate last night, but Mr Farage said that the NHS should be for “British people and families”.