Mayor defiant on 'race jibe'

Ken Livingstone today refused to apologise for his "German war criminal" jibe delivered to a Jewish Evening Standard reporter.

His refusal came as he was referred to an official standards watchdog for comparing reporter Oliver Finegold to a "concentration camp guard".

It also came despite a unanimous call by the London Assembly for him to back down and withdraw his remarks.

He said: "What I said I stand by. If I could, in anything I say, relieve any pain anyone feels, I would not hesitate to do it, but it would require me to be a liar. I could apologise, but why should I say words that I don't believe in my heart?"

An emotional Mr Livingstone justified his refusal to apologise to Holocaust survivors by launching an angry tirade against the Daily Mail - the Standard's sister paper - and other newspapers he accused of harassing his family for 24 years.

"If that's something people can't accept I'm sorry, but this is how I feel on the receiving end of them and their policies and their behaviour and their tactics," he said. "Some journalists are a disgrace, not just to journalism but to the human race."

He pointedly refused to meet three survivors who had gone to City Hall to present a petition and call on him to resign, sitting instead with his back to them. They were furious that Mr Livingstone had compared his treatment at the hands of journalists with the experiences they and their families endured under the Nazis. Josef Perl, 74, who survived eight concentration camps, said: "The Mayor is a bigoted, insensitive person. He made no attempt to meet us. He is not worthy of the position he holds." Mr Livingstone had been urged to apologise by all five parties at the Assembly - including his own Labour group. Bob Neill, Tory group leader, said the Mayor had treated the three survivors sitting in the gallery with disgust.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews today made a formal complaint-to the Committee on Standardsin Public Life about the Mayor's comments, which it said were "entirely unwarranted and unjustified".

In its submission the board said: "In making such comments, Mayor Livingstone demonstrated a gross insensitivity to, and a wilful disregard for, the feelings of appreciable numbers of those he is supposed to represent."

The board's complaint is likely to be passed on to the local government watchdog, the Standards Board for England, which has the power to suspend the Mayor for a year or ban him from public life for five years if he is found guilty of misconduct. Angie Bray, a Tory Assembly member, said Mr Livingstone had "enthusiastically signed up" as a restaurant critic for the Evening Standard's magazine in the Nineties, for which he had been "handsomely paid".

She told the Assembly meeting: "Mr Livingstone personally has done extremely well out of Associated Newspapers.

"When he says you can't expect to work for the Daily Mail group and have the rest of society treat you with respect as a valuable member of society, what then does that say about him?"