Senior Tory who used public money to pay 'invisible' son £12,000 faces suspension

Senior Tory MP Derek Conway faced suspension from the Commons today for paying his son £12,000 a year from public funds while he was at university.

The MP may even be investigated by the police after the all-party Commons standards and privileges committee found the payments - which also included bonuses of up to £5,000 to son Freddie - may have been a "serious diversion of public funds".

Freddie could not recollect why he had received the bonuses.

The committee recommended Mr Conway, MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, be suspended for ten days and should apologise to the Commons for the "serious breach" of the rules.

He said he accepted the criticisms "fully" and had apologised for "administrative short-comings".

Mr Conway, who also employed his wife Colette as a parliamentary assistant, was ordered to repay up to £13,000 in overpayments and tax and National Insurance contributions. The committee concluded that Freddie, "seems to have been all but invisible during the period of his employment".

Freddie was first employed as a part-time research assistant in September 2004, when he was 19, and carried on until August last year.

He was originally hired on £10,000 a year to work 17 hours a week and this salary was later increased to £11,773 and backdated to the start of his work.

On his father's instructionshe also received four one-off sums of up to £5,000. Mr Conway - a former senior whip who led attacks on Labour sleaze - claimed the payments were in lieu of salary upratings and bonuses for work done satisfactorily.