London mayor contender Ken Livingstone was today rebuked by the Commons watchdog.

He was urged to apologise personally to MPs for failing to register properly outside interests worth £158,599.

The Commons Standards and Privileges Committee said in a report the MP had effectively kept the public in the dark about the scale of his substantial earnings.

Forcing the MP to correct his entry in the Register of Member's Interests, the cross-party committee said he should have disclosed how much he earned from public speaking and journalism and listed his interests more fully.

The committee said that of £220,992 received by Mr Livingstone's firm Brighton-based Localaction Ltd, in Duke's Passage, off Duke's Street, between June, 1998, and last month, £158,599 "was attributable to regular commitments which ought to have been registrable."

The committee said: "Mr Livingstone's failure to make an appropriate entry in the Register left the reader wholly unaware of the scale of Mr Livingstone's earnings from these sources." The committee went on: "We recommend that Mr Livingstone should make an apology to the House by means of a personal statement."

The report's findings will be a blow to Mr Livingstone's campaign as an independent in the contest to become London's mayor. In its report, the committee said Mr Livingstone had asked the Commissioner's guidance about his interest in Localaction in August, 1996, in which he referred to journalism and broadcasting fees but did not mention speaking engagements.

Mr Livingstone told the Commissioner in September, 1996, his other activities were "all one-off" after-dinner speeches. "Nothing is on a regular basis," the MP emphasised. But the committee said that by 1998 and 1999 Mr Livingstone was carrying out speaking engagements for a number of clients "on a significant commercial basis".

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