Parliament's Anti-Sleaze watchdog to hold Nannygate inquiry

Parliament's anti-sleaze watchdog will today launch an inquiry into Tory chairman Caroline Spelman and the ' Nannygate' affair.

Mrs Spelman - asked by Conservative leader David Cameron to investigate the question of MPs' perks - is under mounting pressure amid accusations that she herself misused thousands of pounds of taxpayer-funded expenses to pay her former childminder.

She faces losing her job as chairman if it is found that she broke the rules by using public money to pay her nanny Tina Haynes to do secretarial work in her West Midlands constituency in 1997 and 1998.

She has referred the matter to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon and will meet him so he can judge whether she used her staffing allowance inappropriately.

Parliamentary rules prohibit MPs from spending their allowances on activities not directly related to their jobs, but Mrs Spelman insists she acted 'entirely within the rules'

She said Miss Haynes - who was the children's nanny from 1997 to 2002 - also worked as her constituency secretary for six hours a day, including taking phone calls, opening the post and arranging files.

Later in the day she looked after the Meriden MP's three children, according to Mrs Spelman.

But when asked by the BBC's Newsnight about the extent of her secretarial duties, Miss Haynes said she had only posted letters, 'took the odd phone call' and passed on messages 'once or twice a week'.

She later issued a statement saying her role was more formal - but did not specify if this was as a constituency secretary or how many hours she worked.

Mrs Spelman decided to stop the arrangement following a conversation with the Tory chief whip. A party spokesman said: 'Caroline decided that although she had not done anything wrong, it would be better to have separate arrangements for her secretarial staffing and her childcare.'

Labour MP John Mann said that Miss Haynes, from Birmingham, would have left a 'paper trail' of computer files and initialled documents if she had been Mrs Spelman's secretary.

'The use of the money was clearly inappropriate. It may well have been inadvertent, but she should put her hands up and pay the money back and that would be the end of the matter as far as I'm concerned.'

Senior Tories have rallied round Mrs Spelman, who denies any wrongdoing.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: 'I would be amazed if there's any substance to this. She says this is something she did for one year, and thought it might be misrepresented or misinterpreted, it wasn't outside the rules at the time and she put it right then.'