Mark Reckless jeered for suggesting EU migrants could be deported after a 'fixed period' Ukip Rochester candidate Mark Reckless caused outrage during hustings Suggested migrants who have lived in UK for years could be repatriated Mr Reckless is currently on course to win Ukip's second seat this week Comment met with jeers and critics slammed it as 'totally unacceptable' By Tamara Cohen, Political Correspondent for the Daily Mail Ukip parliamentary candidate Mark Reckless has caused outrage by suggesting migrants who have lived here for several years could be repatriated. The former Tory, on course to win the Eurosceptic partyâ€™s second seat tomorrow, said if Britain left the European Union they should only be able to stay for a â€˜fixed periodâ€™. 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, but said this would be a case â€˜we would look sympathetically atâ€™. Ukip parliamentary candidate Mark Reckless (pictured) caused outrage by suggesting migrants who have lived here for several years could be repatriated Mr Reckless pictured with Ukip leader Nigel Farage canvassing in Rochester before the by-election Former home office minister Damian Green said Mr Reckless had come â€˜perilously closeâ€™ to a policy of repatriation and insisted his remarks were â€˜totally unacceptableâ€™. Mr Reckless was addressing an audience of dozens of local residents at a hustings with other candidates in the Rochester and Strood by-election. His remarks were met with jeers and the Labour candidate, PR consultant Naushabah Khan, whose father came from Pakistan in the 1980s and whose mother is Kenyan Asian, said: â€˜Where would you stop Mark? My family are migrants, are we going to say they need to go back as well?â€™ Mr Reckless said British citizens would be able to stay but Ukipâ€™s aim was that migration policy would be the same for EU member states as for other parts of the world. Tory candidate Kelly Tolhurst (pictured left) has also put immigration at the top of her plan for the area, while Labour candidateÂ Naushabah Khan questioned Mr Reckless over the comment Former home office minister Damian Green (pictured) said Mr Reckless had come â€˜perilously closeâ€™ to a policy of repatriation and insisted his remarks were â€˜totally unacceptableâ€™ Ukip leader Nigel Farageâ€™s wife is German. The party has never previously mentioned sending home settled migrants. Mr Green, the Conservative MP for nearby Ashford, said: â€˜This sounds perilously close to repatriation and however strongly people feel about immigration this kind of policy is completely unacceptable.â€™ The host of the debate, screened last night on ITV Meridian, asked Mr Reckless if a Polish plumber living in Rochester would have to return home if Britain left the European Union. Labour frontbencher Chris Bryant (pictured) said 'jaws dropped' when the comment was made He replied: â€˜I think in the near term weâ€™d have to have a transitional period, we should probably allow people who are currently here to have a work permit at least for a fixed period.â€™ Mr Reckless added before being cut off by jeering: â€˜People who have been here a long time and integrated in that way I think weâ€™d want to look sympathetically at. â€˜What we would want to do isâ€¦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 shouldnâ€™t have a discriminatory system which favours Europeans.â€™ Labour frontbencher Chris Bryant, who attended the debate said: â€˜Jaws dropped on the floor when he said it. They are advocating repatriation, but itâ€™s not clear of whom. â€˜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.â€™ Mr Reckless is on course to win the Kent seat, with polls putting his party around 15 points ahead of the Conservatives. The Tory candidate, 36-year-old marine surveyor Kelly Tolhurst, has also put immigration at the top of her six-point plan for the area.Â In one of her campaign leaflets she wrote that she had â€˜seen the negative impact of uncontrolled immigrationâ€™ in the constituency, and said she had told the Prime Minister: â€˜We need action, not just talk.â€™ Three Conservative MPs are holding ballots about European Union membership that are almost identical to those carried out by two Ukip defectors. Peter Bone, MP for Wellingborough, Philip Hollobone, of Kettering, and Martin Vickers, of Cleethorpes, are asking constituents whether they want to be in or out of the EU. Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless conducted similar exercises before defecting. They are all thought to have been advised by anti-EU campaigner Chris Bruni-Lowe, who has long-standing links with Ukip.Â Mr Bone said â€˜private donorsâ€™ were funding his referendum and that his original leaflet was a â€˜crib of the one Mark Reckless didâ€™. All three MPs firmly denied any intention to defect. Mr Bone joked: â€˜I havenâ€™t even been invited to lunch [by Ukip].â€™ Mr Vickers said there was â€˜absolutely no wayâ€™ that he would switch to Ukip. But the revelation will heighten Tory jitters ahead of Thursday's Rochester and Strood by-election.