Tory expenses 'transparency' pledge

The Tory leader's 96-strong frontbench team will have to publicly account for how they spend office and housing allowances from April - as well as naming any family members they employ.

And Mr Cameron told his backbench MPs he expected them to follow suit, although he conceded some were not "overly enthusiastic" about the idea.

Labour accused him of "tit-for-tat making up proposals on the hoof" and said he should wait for the results of an internal review by a panel of MPs, not expected to report until the autumn.

But amid criticisms of the independence and lack of urgency of that review, another Commons committee promised swifter action to force MPs to disclose relatives who worked for them.

The Standards and Privileges Committee - whose report led to Mr Conway being ejected from the Commons for 10 days over the employment of his son - said measures should be in place by April. "The committee will be bringing forward proposals as soon as possible for consideration by the House," it said in a brief statement.

It threatens to pit the powerful body against the Members Estimate Committee (MEC), chaired by Commons Speaker Michael Martin, which announced a root-and-branch review. Mr Martin told MPs it would consider "a wide range of complex issues" but it will not report back until after MPs return from their summer recess in October.

Under Mr Cameron's initiative, Tory MPs would be required to give a full breakdown of how much they spent on such things as equipment, office rent and telephones and to disclose how they spent an accommodation allowance for MPs with a constituency outside central London.

The first declaration will come in July, for the second quarter of this year, with the forms then returned annually each April and the results published centrally for scrutiny.

While only compulsory for frontbenchers "I very much hope and expect that all Conservative MPs will follow suit," Mr Cameron said following a meeting of the whole Parliamentary party. "Not everybody was universally enthusiastic. But I think the general view of the colleagues there was that we have got to get on and start sorting this out ourselves."