Ukip members have never been shy and retiring types when it comes to airing their views, with leader Nigel Farage freely admitting he often struggles to rein in his controversy prone members of the "party of radical alternatives and free speech".

Who could forget Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom's reference to "bongo-bongo land", or his 'women who do not clean behind fridges are sluts' joke, which went down like a lead balloon?

Now Ukip MEP Stuart Agnew has become the next member to cause a stir by saying women do not have the ambition to get all the way to the top because babies "get in the way".

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His remarks that babies get in the way of female ambition drew a flurry of attempted blue-card interventions during European Parliament on Tuesday.

He said: "The point is we have absolute gender balancing in the education system. In fact, if you look at the people who get degrees more, women get them and they are getting the jobs in the work place, but for various reasons, they don't have the ambition to go right to the top because something gets in the way. It's called a baby.

"I've never had a baby, but I understand if you do have a baby it can change your life - it changes your ambitions. So, the route is there. Those females who really want to get to the top do so."