UKIP remove whip from MEP

Friday, 16 July 2004 12:00 AM

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has removed the whip from one of its newly elected MEPs.

Ashley Mote, elected in June for South East England, is facing a court case in the autumn concerning allegations of housing benefit fraud.

Mr Mote has been a member of the UK Independence Party since 2001 and has a long eurosceptic history, having been a founder member of the Magna Carta Society, which claimed: "Successive weak British governments have shown their contempt for democracy and our liberties, consistently ignoring and flouting their sworn constitutional obligations in order to subvert our nation and to illegally impose so-called "European Union" directives upon us."

UKIP was unaware of the court situation until alerted to it by a newspaper article.

Nigel Farage MEP, head of the UKIP delegation in the European Parliament, said: "We do not want to comment on the particulars of the court case, or in any way try to influence the outcome of the case."

This also means that Mr Mote will not be taking up his seat in the newly formed Independence and Democracy Group in the European Parliament.

The new group consists of UKIP and disparate eurosceptic groups from Poland, France, Holland, Denmark and Sweden.

UKIP shot to public prominence in the European elections this June, when they more than doubled their share of the vote to win 16 per cent, pushing the Liberal Democrats into fourth place and returning 12 MEPs.

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