THE bid to clear the name of disgraced North Yorkshire GP Derek Keilloh has now been taken as far as Parliament.

Richmond’s Tory MP Rishi Sunak has presented a petition - signed by more than 3,500 supporters - to the House of Commons.

The petition claims the decision to have Mr Keilloh struck off was a “travesty of justice” caused by a flawed disciplinary process and calls for a rethink on the whole issue.

Derek Keilloh, who worked at the Mayford House surgery in Northallerton, was struck off the medical register in 2012 for allegedly lying about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in 2003, when he was a young Army doctor.

He was accused of lying and found guilty by a tribunal of misleading and dishonest conduct following the death of Iraqi prisoner Baha Mousa in Basra.

However supporters of Mr Keilloh say much of the evidence put before the tribunal was unreliable.

Iraqi witness statements to the tribunal are said to be very similar to statements presented to the Al Sweady Inquiry into allegations of abuses by the British military in Iraq – a number of which have been declared as “wholly and entirely without merit or justification” by the former high court judge who led the inquiry.

Mr Sunak said he was delighted to have helped Mr Keilloh’s family by presenting the petition to the House.

“They deserve to be heard and I hope the petition leads to progress for their collective efforts to clear his name.

He added: “This issue is about how Dr Keilloh was treated and whether the evidence used against him, and largely accepted unquestioningly by the tribunal, can be considered 100 per cent reliable given what we now know about some of the evidence used in attempts to hold British soldiers to account and extract compensation from the Ministry of Defence.”

Mr Sunak said Mr Keilloh’s family had fought a long battle. The case had previously been taken up by his predecessor William Hague.

The former doctor’s mother-in-law, Judy Nicholls, of Askrigg, has co-ordinated the campaign to clear his name and runs the justice4drkeilloh.org.uk site.

Mr Sunak has support to the campaign and helped the family obtain information from the Ministry of Defence and made further requests to the GMC and the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.