ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

Ken Livingstone today repeated controversial claims about Hitler in a TV appearance in which he defended Keith Vaz over claims the Labour MP paid prostitutes for sex.

After claiming father-of-two Mr Vaz - who has been exposed apparently paying male escorts for sex at his London flat - Mr Livingstone said: "Everybody makes mistakes".

The former London Mayor was then asked about his suspension from the Labour Party over comments in which he claimed Adolf Hitler was "supporting Zionism" before he “went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”.

The remarks had plunged Labour into an anti-Semitism row which led to Labour officials suspending Mr Livingstone in April.

But in an interview with the BBC today, he said: “It’s now four months since I’ve been suspended and I’m still waiting for the committee to sit down and decide whether what I said was true or not and I think that the reason they keep putting me off is because I’ve got so much evidence that what I was saying is true.

“I mean, particularly striking if you go to the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, one of the pamphlets they sell to tourists is about the deal that Hitler did with the Zionists in the 1930s.”

He went on: “If I had said Hitler was a Zionist, I wouldn’t just have apologised but I would have gone straight to my doctor to check that I wasn’t in the first stages of dementia.

“To suggest that Hitler was a Zionist is mad. He loathed and feared Jews all his life but he did do a deal with the Zionist movement in the 1930s.”

Exasperated journalists took to twitter to crack jokes about Mr Livingstone after repeating his claims on the airwaves.

Asked if he was alarmed that Mr Vaz could potentially have been exploiting vulnerable young men for sex, he said: “Do you judge someone’s political career on the basis of one incident like this? Everybody makes mistakes.

He went on: “Don’t judge somebody on one mistake that they make in their life or even a couple of mistakes.”

Mr Livingstone also remarked that he had known the MP for up to 40 years and that he had been a good campaigner on a whole range of issues about social justice.

He said: “In all that time, I never recalled him talking anything sex or anything like that or drugs. He was always focused on what he could do to make life better for constituents and the wider community.”

Mr Livingstone also repeated his claims about Hitler and Zionism during an interview about Mr Vaz with Vanessa Feltz on BBC Radio London yesterday.

He said: “I got suspended I couldn’t walk down the street for people stopping me and saying ‘we know what you said is true – don’t give in to them’.

“It’s going to be very difficult for them to expel me from the Labour party when I’ve got this whole sheaf of documents and papers which shows that what I said was true.”

Critics on social media branded Mr Livingstone anti-semitic for reiterating his claims about Hitler.

British Jewish organisation the Board of Deputies called for Mr Livingstone to be expelled from the Labour Party after he reiterated the claims.

Marie van der Zyl, Vice President of the Board of Deputies, told the Jewish Chronicle: "Every day that Labour does not expel him is a stain on the party.”