A senior Foreign Office minister has backed the growing campaign to force the Cabinet Office's unelected honours and decorations (H&D) committee into granting permission for 35,000 ageing British veterans to wear a medal awarded to them by a grateful Malaysian government.

Kim Howells, Minister of State at the FO, has promised to use his influence to help overturn the arbitrary decision by the eight-man committee of Whitehall officials and appointees banning the wearing of the Pingat Jasa Malaysia.

The unaccountable advisers to the Queen claim that old soldiers, including 5000 Scots, who fought communist guerrillas in Malaya between 1957 and 1966 already qualify for a British Malaya bar to be worn on their general service medals and are not entitled to wear two medals for the same campaign.

Don Touhig, part of Labour's defence team until last year, has already said that the refusal is a direct insult to Malaysia, the UK's only Muslim ally willing to honour publicly the bravery of British servicemen and women.

Mr Touhig insists the final say on the issue should lie with parliament rather than with a small group of civil servants and others, and describes their ruling as both "insulting" and "utter nonsense".

Mr Howells said it appeared that the committee "does not always take a great deal of account of the views of ministers" and warned that they might have to "take seriously" the views of elected members.

"While we must take great care in awarding medals and honours, there must also be flexibility and sensitivity as events unfold and circumstances and perceptions change," he added.

"I will try to communicate to my colleagues in government and to the H&D committee that flexibility is needed in this case."

Despite a 1968 edict by the Queen that orders, decorations and medals conferred on UK citizens by Commonwealth countries could be worn "without restriction", the committee has spent much of the past two years obstructing the process.

After several contradictory decisions, it finally ruled in 2006 that eligible veterans, most now in their 70s, could receive the PJM medals, but not wear them publicly.

It cited regulations that stipulate no medals being worn for incidents more than five years in the past and no foreign awards where a British decoration was already available.

Yet last year the government granted permission for medals for the 1956 Suez campaign and allowed Russian medals to be pinned on British survivors of the 1940s Murmansk convoys.

One communication from the H&D members stated that veterans could accept the medal, but "as a souvenir and keepsake only".

This was greeted with anger by veterans, who said it was an insult to the 519 British servicemen - included 95 Scots - killed in the campaign.

Ian Jamieson, a Glasgow businessman and amateur historian, said yesterday: "Australians in Vietnam got the South Vietnam Government Medal as well as the Australian one, presumably with the Queen's permission, and British forces in Korea, another police action', got the UN Medal as well as UK gongs.

"Anyone awarded the Sudan medal 1896-97 got the Egyptian Khedive's medal as well. Recipients included Winston Churchill. No-one seems to have suggested to him he was not entitled to wear it."