THE University of Exeter has accepted donations totalling more than £3m from individuals and organisations in the Middle East.

This has included major contributions from the government of Kurdistan, and the Al Jazeera satellite network.

University chiefs have insisted that anyone making a donation is subject to thorough background checks and that no donor is able to influence research.

But a Conservative MP and former city student, Robert Halfon, is continuing to call for an investigation into a number of the donations which have been received.

A Freedom of Information request provided details of all gifts the institution has received from individuals or groups in the Middle East or North Africa over the past ten years.

Among these are a donation in excess of £1.5m from an individual, who has to remain anonymous for legal reasons, in May 2010 which was to be used for scholarships and in Gulf Studies.

A donation in the region of £1m to £1.5m was made by the Kurdistan government in August 2010 which went to the university's Centre for Kurdish Studies. Additionally, the same government paid £1,134,960 in October 2010 for a scholarship programme while the Kurdstat Broadcasting Corporation, Kurdish satellite television, made a contribution of up to £20,000 to the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies.

Al Jazeera, an Arabic-language news network, paid £35,000 to fund research and other donors include two contributions from the Libyan Petroleum Institute, the Qatar National Research Foundation, Islam Expo Ltd, and the Cordoba Foundation.

A spokesman for the university said: "The university operates strictly according to all relevant national and international legislation regarding the acceptance of donations. Thorough background checks are carried out using information in the public domain with particular attention to ethical considerations, and we have an established protocol for considering such issues on a case-by-case basis. It is a central principle of academic research that any external funding, be it from the UK government or a private organisation or individual, should never influence university study.

"Government and donors may wish to further research activities in a particular field of study such as the ageing population, diabetes, or food security, by making funds available, but the research that is carried out is entirely free from any agenda or influence connected to the funding body."

Mr Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, said he would be continuing to call for a Government inquiry into whether Exeter and other British universities had accepted funding from Middle Eastern dictatorships. He has submitted an Early Day Motion on the issue and said he "remains concerned" about the sources of some of funding the university has received.

In the motion, he calls on the Government to introduce a mechanism "whereby for every £1 that a British university receives in donations from a totalitarian or despotic regime, £1 should be withdrawn from that university in public subsidy".

The university has previously said Mr Halfon's position is not "factually informed" with Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer, co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre, saying it was "disingenuous to suggest the institution had accepted 'blood money'."