Farage’s September 2012 remarks contrast with Ukip’s new claims that it is opposed to privatisation of health service

Nigel Farage has been caught on camera telling Ukip supporters that the state-funded NHS should move towards an insurance-based system run by private companies.

The recording shows Farage saying he believes the marketplace could deliver better value for money when it comes to spending on the NHS.

Farage’s remarks, made in September 2012 on his Common Sense tour of the UK, contrast with Ukip’s new claims that it is opposed to privatisation of the NHS.

The Guardian examined videos of Farage touring the country in an effort to establish some of the Ukip leader’s views on issues other than immigration or Europe.

Other footage showed him proposing that the BBC should not be completely dismantled but slimmed down to concentrate on radio rather than television, with a licence fee slashed to £40 or £50. He also suggested that benefit claimants could be made to clean up litter after six months, and that there was a big problem with employee rights and protections such as maternity leave for small firms.

However, his comments about the NHS were the most striking, leading Labour to claim it was now “plain for all to see that a vote for Ukip is a vote for the privatisation of the NHS”.

Speaking at a meeting in East Sussex, Farage said: “I think we’re going to have to think about healthcare very, very differently. I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare.

“Frankly, I would feel more comfortable that my money would return value if I was able to do that through the market place of an insurance company than just us trustingly giving £100bn a year to central government and expecting them to organise the healthcare service from cradle to grave for us.

“I just feel with the whole healthcare service – one promise Blair did keep is that he would increase expenditure; we’ve doubled expenditure on the NHS in 15 years – and we haven’t got frankly double the return.

“If I had a magic answer, I could glibly say, don’t give the EU £50m a day and spend it on British pensioners. That would get a clap round the audience but actually even that would not be sufficient to deal with the scale of this problem. That is me being completely honest with you.”

Andy Burnham MP, the shadow health secretary, said: “Nigel Farage poses as a man of the people, but his views on the NHS are out of step with 99% of the public.

“Farage can drink as many pints as he likes, but he’ll never be able to distance himself from these views that would go down like a lead balloon in pubs and clubs across the land.

“It is now plain for all to see that a vote for Ukip is a vote for the privatisation of the NHS.”

But a Ukip spokesman said the NHS was an area where the party’s policy has developed the most over the past few years and Farage’s comments in East Sussex no longer represented his views.

“Obviously things have moved on significantly since then. That was then and this is now. It doesn’t stand up to say that’s still his view.”

The Ukip spokesman said there was some truth in the idea that something has got to give in the NHS but it would be reckless and impractical to go that way in the foreseeable future. He also pointed out Ukip had taken the radical step of aligning with the trade unions to oppose TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) – a US-EU trade deal that its opponents say could allow American private health firms into the NHS.

“We have people in the party who know significantly more about the NHS than we did at that time,” the spokesman said.

The NHS has become a huge battleground in byelections between Labour and Ukip, which is trying to appeal to the disillusioned left.

Farage’s party fought the Heywood & Middleton byelection and is battling to win Rochester & Strood next week on a platform of protecting the NHS.

However, Labour has pointed out in its leaflets that Ukip MEP Paul Nuttall posted a letter on his website a few years ago praising the coalition for bringing a “whiff of privatisation to the NHS”.

Farage has also got into hot water previously for telling the Telegraph that he thought a big businessman could be better at running the NHS than its current officials.

The idea of an insurance-based system, where people would not pay for the NHS through taxes but medical insurance, was not contained in Ukip’s 2010 policy manifesto, which Farage has since disowned and said he did not properly read.

However, there was at one point a proposal on its website for the party to do a cost-benefit analysis of a “co-insurance” medical system, which now appears to have been abandoned.