The disgraced former deputy chairman Lord Archer is to be expelled from the Conservative Party for five years for "damaging" its reputation.

The party's ethics and integrity committee said the limit would have been longer had it not been for the "fantastic amount of work" he had contributed.

But Lord Archer still has a right to appeal to the senior Conservative Lord Mayhew before expulsion takes effect.

Following the announcement Lord Archer said in a statement: "I am naturally disappointed with the committee's decision, which I consider to be grossly unfair.

"I shall be consulting my advisers early next week as to whether or not to appeal."

The former Tory vice-chairman was forced to quit in November as the party's candidate for London mayor. He admitted asking a friend to lie for him during a libel trial with the Daily Star newspaper in 1987.

In their judgement, the committee said: "The conduct which Lord Archer had engaged in was conduct which, once revealed, was new and damaging to the party.

"It is the element of concealment which also makes what Lord Archer had done in order to promote his personal ambitions more reprehensible."

Sir Archie Hamilton MP of the Conservative Ethics and Integrity Committee said they took the "bad" case "very seriously".

However, he said they also took his contribution to the party into consideration.

"He has worked tirelessly around the country and has raised enormous sums of money, and if it hadn't been for that I think we would have gone for a rather longer period," he said.

Conservative Party chairman Michael Ancram said: "I am grateful to the committee for their determination and the way they have conducted this referral."

Party vice-chairman Andrew Lansley, said: "It's a reasonable decision. I thought Jeffrey would be expelled from the party and no time limit would be set."

'Kangaroo court'

Lord Archer's spokesman had earlier attacked the way in which the ethics committee had handled the case.

Stefan Shakespeare said the committee acted like a kangaroo court and had behaved unethically itself by leaking its decision to the media.

He told the BBC: "There was a cast iron agreement with ethics committee not to discuss the process.

"We have kept to that, we have only discussed that which they have already leaked, so one member of the Tory Party ethics and integrity committee has acted without integrity and unethically and that is rather ironic."

Scotland Yard detectives investigating whether Lord Archer committed perjury or conspired to pervert the course of justice at the 1987 libel trial are yet to speak to him.

They have already travelled to Thailand to interview "bag carrier" Michael Stacpoole who handed over £2,000 to the prostitute at the centre of the scandal.