The newly-installed deputy chairman of the Conservative Party has called for the return of the death penalty.
Controversial right-winger Lee Anderson claimed that capital punishment has a "100% success rate" and said Lee Rigby's killers should have been "gone the same week".
Mr Anderson, who was previously nicknamed 30p Lee after claiming he could cook meals from scratch for this sum, told The Spectator magazine: "Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed."
And to those who warn this can lead to wrongful executions, he said: "Well, you can prove it if they have videoed it and are on camera – like the Lee Rigby killers. I mean: they should have gone, same week."
The last execution in the UK took place in 1964 after reviews by the Criminal Cases Review Commission led to one person being pardoned and three exonerated after their deaths.
The Red Wall MP, who has represented Ashfield in Nottinghamshire since 2019, was a surprise pick for the Tory Party deputy chairman position this week.
He is a divisive figure in his own party, with one fellow Tory MP accusing him of "deliberately provoking and making aggressive simplistic statements".
Mr Anderson hit the headlines in 2021 when he refused to support the England team's run to the final in the European Championships in a protest over players taking the knee.
And in an address at the party conference in September last year he claimed food banks were staffed by "do gooders" trying to "make themselves feel good".
The former coal miner, 56, said he's not "some toffee nosed Tory", telling the magazine he'd experienced poverty himself as a single dad, and added: "There is nowhere more deprived than the street I was brought up on."
The new Tory chairman, Greg Hands, said he expected Mr Anderson to be a "great asset", saying he had "great integrity".
The appointment of Mr Anderson, an MP from a so-called Red Wall seat with a tendency to make controversial comments, is seen as an attempt to balance giving the party chairmanship to a previously remain-supporting London MP in Mr Hands.
Mr Anderson has been dubbed "30p Lee" for claiming that meals could be prepared for that sum and suggesting people using food banks could not budget.
In 2021, when the men's Euro 2020 football tournament was taking place, he vowed to boycott England matches in protest against the players' anti-racism stance of taking the knee before matches.
Even when Gareth Southgate's team got to the final, Mr Anderson said he would not tune in, although he admitted he might check the score on his phone.
Mr Hands declined to say whether he backed some of Mr Anderson's past comments, but told LBC he had not "studied every single pronouncement made by Conservative backbenchers".
He said he would not comment on things that had been said in the past, but was looking forward to working with Mr Anderson.
Asked if he or the party endorsed those various views, he said: "In terms of things that may or may not have been said in the past, I don't have encyclopaedic knowledge of what everybody has ever said in the past."
Ashfield MP Mr Anderson will have a "fairly wide-ranging role", the Prime Minister's press secretary said.
"Lee Anderson is a very hard-working MP, he's an excellent campaigner, he is very popular, particularly in his constituency and he will do a fantastic job working with the new chairman to champion the Conservative Party and everything this Conservative government is doing," she added.