North Oxfordshire MP Tony Baldry has demanded a change to Government rules after a parish councillor in the county was reported to a national watchdog for a pub argument.

The Conservative MP, who represents Banbury and Bicester residents, is furious that South Newington parish councillor Robert McCall is under investigation for throwing beer at another drinker.

In a special debate in the House of Commons he called for the action against Mr McCall to be dropped and the tough rules for the Local Government Standards Board to be changed.

Mr Baldry, a former Tory Local Government Minister, said: "Mr McCall was involved in an altercation in the local pub, not a particularly elegant altercation, but simply an argument with another constituent of mine.

"They threw beer at each other.

"There is a dispute as to whether Mr McCall struck the other constituent, but that is putting it at its highest.

"The dispute was not about how he conducted himself as a parish councillor or how he voted in parish council meetings."

A constituent, who not present in the pub, wrote a month after the incident to the standards board, complaining that Mr McCall had brought South Newington Parish Council into disrepute.

This sparked an investigation, which started in November and is still under way.

The MP told Local Government Minister Phil Hope that the powers of the Local Government Standards Board were excessive.

Mr Baldry said: "If I had gone into the local pub and had a row with someone that degenerated into throwing beer, I should certainly expect to be excoriated in the Press and before the chief whip.

"However, there is no way that the constituent could refer me to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for it. That would be a matter for the electors at the next General Election."

He said the matter was too trifling for a standards board investigation and the matter should be dropped.

He said: "Investigation seems so monstrously oppressive in relation to what Mr McCall was alleged to have done.

"I hope that the standards board will in due course say that the matter is not for it to investigate, and that it is a tiff in a pub and does not require the full panoply of the board."