10:05pm UK, Monday June 09, 2008

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is "considering carefully" accusations that Tory chairman Caroline Spelman misused public money.

Spelman is not the only Tory with expenses problems

She has been accused of using her expenses to pay her children's nanny but says Tina Haynes was also working as her constituency secretary when the payments were made.

In a statement, John Lyon'soffice said it would be "exceptional" for him to investigate a matter from more than seven years ago.

"The Parliamentary Commissioner has received representations from Mrs Caroline Spelman MP that he should investigate the circumstances of the employment of her then secretary in 1997," Mr Lyon's office said.

"The Commissioner is considering carefully this matter against the procedures agreed by the Committee on Standards and Privileges for the investigation of complaints against Members."

Tory leader David Cameron defended his party chairman but said MPs must be "more open and accountable.

"We have got to recognise as MPs it is not enough just to meet the letter of the rules," he said, "We have to be happy that everything we put in place for funding our offices is something that reasonable and practical people would look at and say 'That's OK.'

"Is someone has done something wrong they get investigated, if they have broken the rules I take away the whip but if they have broken the law they should face the appropriate consequences," he told GMTV.

Meanwhile, there are further questions over Tory MEPs' expenses: the Sunday Times reported that Conservative MEP Sir Robert Atkins attended his son's wedding in America during a visit paid for from parliamentary allowances.

Sir Robert told the paper the wedding coincided with an invitation from the Republican National Committee to meet party members in the US.

The report follows the resignation of the Conservative leader in the European Parliament Giles Chichester, after it emerged he transferred more than £400,000 of staff expenses to a private family company.

The party's chief whip in Brussels, Den Dover, was also replaced after insisting there was nothing wrong in paying his wife and daughter a reported £758,000 over nine years through a company for secretarial and support services.