The Conservative candidate in the Wakefield by-election has said voters should still vote Tory as “we still trust GPs” despite Harold Shipman having been a doctor.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Nadeem Ahmed was asked why people should vote Conservative given the seat’s previous Tory MP resigned after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a boy.
Labour is widely expected to win red wall seat back on June 23, having lost it to the Conservatives in 2019.
“It was the right thing to happen to him,” Ahmed said of Imran Ahmad Khan.
“He’s in prison, which is the right place. As a teacher, a father, and as a human being, what he did was wrong.
“He’s been convicted of that offence, and I cannot stand here and say that was right. It was absolutely disgusting. And the people of Wakefield know that he was one bad apple.”
Ahmed added: “Harold Shipman committed suicide in Wakefield prison. He was a GP, he was a trusted professional, just like teachers and others.
“When they put a vaccine in our arms, we trust what they are putting in us.
“Have we stopped trusting GPs? No, we still trust GPs and we know that he was one bad apple in there.”
Shipman was given a life sentence in 2000 and is believed to have killed 250 patients.
In May, Imran Ahmad Khan was jailed for 18 months as a judge said he faced “a day of reckoning” for groping a 15-year-old boy in 2008.