The former deputy leader of UKIP has claimed that AIDS is the “wages” of gay promiscuity.

Lord Christopher Monckton – a former Conservative advisor – joined UKIP in 2009 and served as the party’s deputy leader, and President in Scotland.

Writing for right-wing site WorldNetDaily, Lord Monckton launched a scathing attack on the gay community, dismissively referring to LGBT people as “QWERTYs” after the letters on the keyboard.

He said: “Official survey after official survey had shown that homosexuals had an average of 500-1,000 partners in their sexually active lifetime, and that some had as many as 20,000. One wonders how they found time for anything else.

“The wages of promiscuity is deadly disease. It is now at last admitted, even in official circles, that HIV is chiefly a disease of homosexuals and drug-abusers – and that a far greater percentage of homosexuals than heterosexuals do drugs.

“AIDS, then, is at root a ‘gay’ disease, and officialdom’s terrified refusal to admit that fact has killed 36 million worldwide.”

Defending anti-gay Australian politician Rosalie Crestani – who is attempting to ban the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality – Lord Monckton said: “Councillor Crestani was so shocked by the official mortality figures for homosexuals that she proposes to circulate a memorandum to all councillors and staff giving them detailed statistics for promiscuity, prevalence of HIV and many other sexually transmitted diseases, and for the consequently short, miserable lives and high death rate of homosexuals.

“And why have homosexuals – most of whose partners last as little as a few hours – been so keen to promote the lifetime promises of so-called ‘gay’ so-called ‘marriage’?

“The reason, of course, is that they cannot produce children, so they want to adopt them. Is this fair to the children? The answer is no.”

Lord Monckton left the party last December, after reported ‘in-fighting’.

As the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, the politician has a hereditary peerage – and was engaged in a long-running dispute over the House of Lords Act 1999, that he claims deprived him of a seat in the Lords.

He stood unsuccessfully in a number of by-elections for the House, and claims to be “a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote” – but the Clerk of the Parliaments insists he is not and never has been in the House of Lords.

It is not the first controversial comment he has made about AIDS.

In 1987, he wrote: “There is only one way to stop AIDS. That is to screen the entire population regularly and to quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month.

“All those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently.”