Ukip MEP calls for reintroduction of death penalty on fiftieth anniversary of last deaths

Louise Bours, Ukip's health spokesperson, has said public feel "let down" by the penal system

Rose Troup Buchanan
Thursday 14 August 2014 14:01 BST
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Louise Bours on Question Time
Louise Bours on Question Time

A Ukip MEP marked the fiftieth anniversary of the abolishment of the death penalty by calling for it to be reintroduced.

Louise Bours, MEP for North West England, said on Tuesday that “the death penalty is absolutely justice, natural justice.”

The Ukip health spokesperson qualified her remarks by adding: “That isn’t going to apply to everything across the board, but I think if you look at generally what people want I think this highlights the disconnect between politicians and the people on the street.

“We do seem let down by our justice system in a massive way and I think this would readdress the balance.”

The final two people to be executed in the UK, Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen, were hanged at prisons in Manchester and Liverpool fifty years ago this week.

Miss Bours’ remarks come as a new poll shows support for the death penalty among the British public has fallen by six per cent since 2010, although 45 per cent still favour its reintroduction with support highest among the over 60s and Ukip voters.

Citing Roy Whiting, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, Bours said: “Their guilt is not in dispute, and I think to ask the tax payers to keep them in prison, for life, is an abomination and instead we should have a more victim lead and family lead justice system as opposed to always centred around the perpetrator.”

Speaking to The Independent a Ukip party spokesperson, said: “It’s not party policy and we don’t actually support the policy.

“Louise Bours was speaking in a personal capacity as were other Ukip party members who have come out in support of a return of the death penalty.”

Ukip deputy leader Paul Nuttall, MEP for the north of England, has been vocal about his desire to introduce the death penalty for child murderers, serial killers and individuals who murder police officers.

In 2011 Godfrey Bloom, then an Ukip MEP, also called for the death penalty to be reintroduced.

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