A city councillor has been cleared of breaking data protection laws after a seven-month investigation.

Aylestone councillor Nigel Porter was reported to Leicester City Council's standards board in February, weeks after passing on council spending documents to the Mercury.

The documents listed all monthly payments over £500 made by the council – something the coalition Government had ordered all councils to do. Despite the papers being marked "for publication", senior officers at the authority flagged up the issue with his Tory group leader, Councillor Ross Grant.

Coun Porter was suspended by the city's Tory group, and when he later showed the documents to regional party chiefs in an effort to clear his name, he was reported to the council's internal investigation body.

This week, he was told he had been cleared of breaching council rules.

He said: "I have been vindicated after months of uncertainty.

"The whole ordeal has been like a bad dream.

"I knew all along that I had not broken any laws or rules by releasing the information, and I have maintained my position throughout this process.

"The truth always outs in the end. I do believe that Ross Grant used this issue in an attempt to force me from the local party, and I still don't know his motivations for doing so."

Councillor Porter resigned from the Conservative Party to join the Liberal Democrats in March, after he had been de-selected as a Tory candidate for May's local elections.

Reacting to the decision, Coun Grant said: "I am surprised at the decision given the extremely strong case put to me by both the then-chief executive Sheila Lock and monitoring officer Perry Holmes.

"I was told repeatedly by both of them that a breach of the act had occurred.

"Given the committee's decision this week, it appears they had given me inaccurate information.

"This was not about targeting Nigel, this was about making sure that the laws were followed by councillors in the Conservative group.

"Given the information I was given at the time, it was right to suspend Nigel while the investigation was carried out."

Mr Holmes said: "We can confirm the standards committee found that Coun Nigel Porter was not in breach of the council's code of conduct."

The council declined to add anything following Coun Grant's claims.

The Data Protection Act was passed in 1998 and governs the protection of personal data in the UK. Criminal breaches of the act can result in fines.