I won't quit over expenses - Cash

Mr Cash said he was willing to pay back the cash claimed for the rent of a London flat owned by daughter Laetitia after party leader David Cameron warned he had "very serious questions to answer".

But he insisted he did not intend to become the latest MP forced out of Parliament altogether by mounting public anger over state-funded second-home allowance claims and maintained the public purse had not lost out.

The Daily Telegraph revealed that Mr Cash paid his daughter £1,200 a month from allowances to rent her Notting Hill flat during 2004 and 2005.

At the time she was fighting the general election as Tory candidate for Salford, and living at the family's main home in Shropshire as well as "moving around a great deal", according to Mr Cash. However, the MP for Stone in Staffordshire also owned a "modest" one-bedroom flat in Pimlico - much closer to Parliament - where his son, Sam, was staying rent-free.

Renting from family members, now banned, was allowed at the time and the arrangement did not involve "any financial advantage", Mr Cash stressed.

"I do not agree with the suggestion that renting my daughter's flat, in the circumstances, was unreasonable.

"I had to live somewhere to perform my parliamentary duties. The rent which was agreed was a reasonable rent and the tenancy agreement had been cleared by the Fees Office in advance," he said.

Mr Cameron, who has set up a party panel to decide which MPs should repay money or face expulsion, said: "I think Bill Cash has got some very serious questions to answer and he needs to answer those questions."

Around 70 MPs have so far announced their intention not to stand at the next election - the bulk of them doing so before expense claims were revealed.