Conway insists he is not a crook

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Derek Conway insisted he had done nothing wrong in employing his sons Henry and Freddie as researchers and rejected claims that they did little or no work in return for tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money.

Mr Conway announced this week that he will stand down as an MP at the coming General Election, after David Cameron withdrew the Conservative whip following a scathing Commons committee report on his employment of Freddie.

He now faces a possible second inquiry into the job he gave his elder son, while Scotland Yard are considering a demand for a police probe to examine allegations of fraud.

In his first interview since the report from the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee, Mr Conway told the Mail on Sunday: "I am not a crook... I still believe I have done nothing wrong."

Monday's report said there was no record of Freddie, a full-time student at Newcastle University, performing any work in return for the £40,000 he received over three years and said he was "all but invisible" at Westminster.

The arrangement was "at the least an improper use of parliamentary allowances" and "at worst, a serious diversion of public funds", said the report.

But Mr Conway insisted that both Freddie and Henry - who he employed earlier - did the work for which they were paid.

Freddie, 22, would regularly make the three-hour journey back from Newcastle to go through his father's post and emails at home in London, as well as working for him during the long university holidays, he said.

"A lot of students do part-time work. He was working for his father rather than working in McDonald's," Mr Conway told the Mail on Sunday. "He used to come home frequently. He would go up and down like a fiddler's elbow while he was away. There are MPs who commute greater distances than that on a weekly basis and some are three times Freddie's age. I don't think it was unusual."