UKIP leader Nigel Farage has been caught on camera calling for the replacement of the NHS with a privatised healthcare system, despite UKIP’s claim that they want to protect the NHS.

In footage recorded at a UKIP public meeting in September 2012 on his “Common Sense” tour, Farage can be heard telling party faithfuls that the state-funded NHS should move towards an insurance-based system run by private companies, following a US-style model.

Farage told his audience in East Sussex:

“I think we’re going to have to think about healthcare very, very differently. I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare.

“Frankly, I would feel more comfortable that my money would return value if I was able to do that through the market place of an insurance company than just us trustingly giving £100bn a year to central government and expecting them to organise the healthcare service from cradle to grave for us.

“I just feel with the whole healthcare service – one promise Blair did keep is that he would increase expenditure; we’ve doubled expenditure on the NHS in 15 years – and we haven’t got frankly double the return.

“If I had a magic answer, I could glibly say, don’t give the EU £50m a day and spend it on British pensioners. That would get a clap round the audience but actually even that would not be sufficient to deal with the scale of this problem. That is me being completely honest with you.”

Despite the emergence of the footage, Farage maintains that the idea of privatisation of the NHS was merely an idea he proposed a couple of years ago that was rejected by the party, and was closer to the French or Dutch models of healthcare insurance than the US system.

However, Labour leader Ed Miliband condemned Farage’s comments about privatisation, tweeting:

“David Cameron is taking our NHS backwards and Nigel Farage wants to privatise the NHS completely. Let’s stop them.”