Labour MP Dennis Skinner has accused Mark Reckless and his colleague Douglas Carswell of wanting to deport foreigners in a fiery outburst in the Commons.
After Reckless was sworn in as Ukip's second MP on Friday, the veteran Labour backbencher tore into him during a debate on the National Health Service.
"We dragged the National Health Service from the depths of degradation," he said. "I've got a United Nations heart bypass to prove it and it was done by a Syrian cardiologist, a Malaysian surgeon, a Dutch doctor and a Nigerian registrar."
To loud shouts from his fellow Labour MPs, Skinner went on to savage Carswell and Reckless for their "talk about sending them [foreigners] back".
This comes after Reckless caused outrage in the final days of the recent Rochester and Strood by-election campaign after suggesting that migrants who have lived in the UK for several years could be turfed out of the country.
The Tory defector argued that in an EU-free Britain migrants would only be able to stay for a "fixed period." His comments were met with horror and jeers as he addressed an audience of dozens of local residents at an ITV hustings with other by-election candidates/
Labour candidate, PR consultant Naushabah Khan, who is herself the daughter of immigrants, asked Reckless where he would draw the line.
"Where would you stop Mark? My family are migrants, are we going to say they need to go back as well?" she asked.
Asked if his party would want to deport a plumber from Poland who owned a home and had children at local schools he did not rule it out.
“I think in the near term we’d have to have a transitional period, and I think we should probably allow people who are currently here to have a work permit at least for a fixed period,” he said during the debate, which was aired on local television.
As the audience jeered, he added that this would be a case Ukip "would look sympathetically at."
"What we would want to do is…apply a consistent Australian-style points system, the same to people coming from Europe as we do to those coming from say the Commonwealth, from Australia, Africa, India, the Caribbean, we shouldn’t have a discriminatory system which favours Europeans."
Labour frontbencher Chris Bryant, who attended the debate told the Daily Mail: "Jaws dropped on the floor when he said it. They are advocating repatriation, but it’s not clear of whom.
"It sounds like a kangaroo court of Ukip officials would decide who stays and who goes. This shows how dangerous ill-thought out populism can be."
Others also voiced their disgust on social media:
Former home office minister Damian Green, the Conservative MP for Ashford, added that Reckless had come "perilously close" to a policy of repatriation.
"However strongly people feel about immigration this kind of policy is completely unacceptable," he said.
Yvette Cooper MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, said that "once again, a UKIP candidate has let the mask slip to show the extent of their nasty and divisive views, and their outdated vision for Britain.
"To hear the language of repatriation coming from someone they hope will be their second MP is shameful.
"It's a policy that comes straight out of the last BNP manifesto and does not reflect British values. Be it Mark Reckless talking about repatriation, council candidates who attack Lenny Henry for the colour of his skin, or party thugs who overturn other parties' street stalls, nasty views are not far below the surface."
Ukip hit back and said Reckless was being misrepresented and that "if he was not being interrupted so much at the hustings meeting, he would have been able to make his position clearer."
A statement read:
Ukip and Mark have always been completely clear on this. Do not believe the desperate last throw of the dice from the Conservative party. There is no intention whatsoever to backdate future border controls to penalise those already here.
Mark simply made the absolutely common sense point that there will be a period after future border control arrangements have been agreed before they come into effect.
The way the Tory machine is spinning this is a travesty of honest reporting.
