A Tory councillor in Britain who stunned the family of a British army suicide victim with an alleged four-letter word outburst was tonight suspended from the party.
The decision to suspend Mr Neville Sanders, leader of Peterborough City Council, was taken at a monthly board meeting at Conservative Party Central Office.
A panel of the board will now investigate the matter before taking any further action.
Before tonight's meeting, party chairwoman Ms Theresa May had asked for a report about Mr Sanders' comments rubbishing calls for an independent inquiry into Royal Irish Regiment Trooper Paul Cochrane.
Mr Sanders left relatives of Mr Cochrane shocked when he said they should accept the deaths of members of the armed forces.
He also said that enough English soldiers had been killed in Northern Ireland to fill a Doomsday Book and said the people of Northern Ireland should apologise.
The Conservative Party's Northern Ireland spokesman, Mr Quentin Davies - who met with the Cochrane family today - said he supported the decision to suspend Mr Sanders.
"This is the right decision by the board of the Conservative Party given Mr Sanders' unacceptable and deeply offensive comments that he has repeated over recent days.
Trooper Cochrane is believed to have shot himself in 2001 on an army base in Co Armagh.
He had left three suicide notes which claimed he had been abused by other soldiers while under the command of Gulf War hero Lt Col Tim Collins.
Peterborough was one of a number of UK councils being urged to back calls for a full inquiry into Trooper Cochrane's death and other disputed deaths at military bases such as Deepcut in Surrey.
The council received a letter from Carrickfergus Borough Council in Northern Ireland asking it to back the campaign but it was returned by Mr Sanders.
Mr Billy Cochrane, the father of the RIR soldier, said he was disappointed that Mr Sanders had not been expelled outright from the party.
He said: "With the insults and some of the remarks about ourselves and people from Northern Ireland, we would have thought that the Tories would have wanted to be seen to be doing the right thing.
"We had heard suggestions earlier in the week that they wouldn't get rid of him. They made statements saying they were shocked and disgusted, but they weren't that shocked and disgusted when they only suspended him."
PA