A Ukip candidate has called for free flights to Iraq and Syria for Britons who want to fight for Islamic State.

Keith Fraser, who will contest the Hackney North and Stoke Newington seat, said: “People who want to fight for groups like IS, Boko Haram or Hamas, well we should charter a plane and send them all over there in one go.

“Then we should take away their British passports so they do not come back. If they want to go and fight, let them. They are a cancer that needs to be cut out before it becomes terminal.”

Mr Fraser is a Woodside Park United Synagogue member and chartered surveyor. He will take on Labour’s Diane Abbott in a constituency where 11.3 per cent of voters are Jewish.

He said the rise in radical Islamism posed an increased threat to British Jews.

“This is not about political correctness,” he said. “This is not the time to be weak. It is not a time to have a soft hand.”