The Mayor of London lodged an appeal at the High Court today against being suspended for a month for likening a Jewish reporter to a Nazi.

Ken Livingstone was judged on Friday to have brought his office into disrepute over the exchange. The suspension is due to start on Wednesday.

Arriving to lodge the papers at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Tony Child, Mr Livingstone' solicitor, said it was hoped that a judge would grant an emergency injunction to "stay" his suspension until the challenge is heard.

Mr Child said: "We are lodging an appeal against the decision of the case tribunal that the mayor breached paragraph four of the Greater London Authority’s code of conduct, and also against the finding that one month’s suspension from office was an appropriate sanction."

Paragraph four of the code prohibits members of the GLA, which includes the office of mayor, from conducting themselves in a manner which could reasonably be regarded as bringing their office, or the authority itself, into disrepute.

Mr Child added that a judge would also be asked to "stay" the decision of the case tribunal "until after the mayor’s appeal has been heard and determined".

He said that the application could go before a judge this evening for him to make a decision, or a decision could be made tomorrow.

Mr Child added: "Our contention is that the case tribunal’s decision is inconsistent with Article Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to private life, and Article 10, which protects the right to freedom of expression."

The Adjudication Panel for England unanimously found Mr Livingstone guilty of bringing his office into disrepute in the verbal clash with Oliver Finegold, a London Evening Standard reporter, outside City Hall in the capital last February.

David Laverick, chairman of the panel sitting in Central London, said that he was "concerned" that Mr Livingstone had failed to realise the seriousness of his outburst, which the watchdog described as "unnecessarily insensitive".

Mr Livingstone, who has consistently refused to apologise for his comments despite pleas from the Jewish community, hit back by saying that the ruling: "strikes at the heart of democracy".

In a statement, he said: "Elected politicians should only be able to be removed by the voters or for breaking the law. Three members of a body that no one has ever elected should not be allowed to overturn the votes of millions of Londoners."

Today's appeal will inevitably add to the already hefty bill for legal costs which Mr Livingstone faces after arguing the case. So far he is thought to have spent £80,000.

The incident occurred as Mr Livingstone was approached by Mr Finegold as he left a party marking 20 years since Chris Smith, the former Culture Secretary, became Britain’s first openly-gay MP.

Mr Livingstone objected to being questioned by Mr Finegold and asked the journalist whether he had ever been a "German war criminal". When Mr Finegold replied that he was Jewish, the Mayor likened him to a Nazi concentration camp guard.

The maximum penalty available to the tribunal under the Greater London Authority's code of conduct was to bar him from office, but the tribunal chose suspension - the second most severe sanction. They could also have chosen to censure him, or to order him to apologise or to undergo training.

Mr Laverick said: "The reasonable onlooker would regard Mr Livingstone’s reputation as being damaged as a result of the exchange. The case tribunal has also concluded that the remarks have also had the effect of damaging the reputation of his office of mayor."

He went on to say that disqualifying Mr Livingstone from his position would not be appropriate.

He said: "The Case Tribunal is however concerned that the Mayor does seem to have failed, from the outset of this case, to have appreciated that his conduct was unacceptable, was a breach of the code (the GLA code of conduct) and did damage to the reputation of his office.

"His representative is quite right in saying, as he did on February 23, that matters should not have got as far as this but it is the Mayor who must take responsibility for this. It was his comments that started the matter, and thereafter his position seems to have become ever more entrenched."

Nicky Gavron, the Deputy Mayor, has been standing by to fill in for Mr Livingstone. She said that the panel's ruling was absurd and struck at the roots of democracy.

During the case, the Adjudication Panel was told that Mr Livingstone felt he had been persecuted by the press. The Mayor said that his retort was expressing his "long-held and, it is accepted, honestly-held, political view" of Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard.

He accused them of anti-Semitism, and the Standard of "harassing" the largely gay private reception held at City Hall but paid for with public money. Mr Livingstone did not intend to offend the Jewish community but was exercising his freedom of speech, and had been rude to journalists for years, he said.

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