Galloway faces Commons suspension

The anti-war maverick was censured by the standards and privileges committee for failing to register an interest and "excessive" use of taxpayer-funded facilities for the cause.

But the committee also said he should be heavily punished for concealing funding from Saddam Hussein's former regime and for unjustified attacks on the inquiry itself. Its report came at the end of a lengthy and detailed investigation into the Mariam Appeal by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir Philip Mawer.

He complained that the former Labour MP had "consistently failed to live up to the expectation of openness and straightforwardness" during the inquiry. And he found "powerful" evidence that large sums for the charity came from the Iraq regime via the UN's Oil for Food programme and that Mr Galloway was probably complicit in that.

Subject to the approval of MPs, Mr Galloway will now be excluded from the Commons and stripped of his salary for 18 sitting days when Parliament returns after its summer recess in October.

But Mr Galloway scorned the findings - insisting that he was being punished for defending himself against "low blows" and that he deserved a medal not a suspension. "I am not a punchbag. If you aim low blows at me I will fight back. That's what I've done and that's what I've been suspended for," he declared.

Speaking outside the Commons, he went on: "I was campaigning to stop sanctions and war on Iraq. If these people behind me had listened to me, hundreds of thousands of people now dead would still be alive and Britain would not be in peril, here at home and around the world. They should be striking a medal for me for my work on Iraq, not suspending me."

The inquiry was launched in 2003 but was suspended for more than two years during Mr Galloway's successful libel action against the Daily Telegraph over claims he received money from Saddam.

Sir Philip said there was no evidence that the MP had personally received payments but that there was "powerful" circumstantial evidence that "a substantial part" of donations to the appeal from its chairman, Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zureikat, "came from moneys derived, via the Oil for Food programme, from the former Iraqi regime".

"Consequently Mr Galloway's political activities conducted through the appeal were thus, in part, funded by the regime and Mr Galloway at best turned a blind eye to what was happening and, on balance, was likely to have known and been complicit in what was going on," he concluded.