UKIP was hit with a six-figure legal bill at the High Court today for having prevented one of its MEPs from settling a libel case brought by three Labour MPs in order to gain “party political advantage.”

Kevin Barron, Sarah Champion and John Healey were awarded £54,000 each in damages after Jane Collins claimed in her 2014 Ukip conference speech that they had known about child exploitation in Rotherham but failed to intervene.

Ms Collins, who came second to Ms Champion in Rotherham at the 2015 general election, was also ordered to make a £120,000 interim payment on costs last February, before lawyers for the MPs sought costs from Ukip itself.

On Thursday, Mr Justice Warby, who told the court that “none of those sums have been paid,” ordered that Ukip pay the MPs’ legal costs from March 20 2015 to June 23 2015, plus costs from a January 2017 assessment hearing.

The judge found that Ukip, at national executive meetings in early 2015, had taken a “deliberate, informed and calculated decision … to ensure that the case was not settled before the [2015] general election.”

He also found that, by March 2015, “a decision had been taken at a high level within Ukip that the action should be settled but not until after the election” in pursuit of “political gain.”

But Mr Warby also found that Ukip could not be “criticised” for initially providing limited funding to Ms Collins, accepting that it had been “prompted by motives of conscience.”

Gerald Shamash, the MPs’ lawyer, said the size of Ukip’s bill was “likely to be over £200,000 in total.” The amount is subject to an assessment to be heard at a later date.