A City enforcer will be sent to rake through Conservative MEP accounts next week after the party’s chief whip in Brussels lost his job in the fallout from an expenses scandal that claimed the scalp of the party leader there.

David Cameron will send Hugh Thomas, the Tory head of compliance, to improve the handling of expenses after Giles Chichester was forced to quit as Conservative group leader for channelling £445,000 through a company of which he was a paid director. Yesterday Mr Chichester was followed through the exit door by Den Dover, the Chief Whip in the European Parliament, who had come under scrutiny for paying £758,146 in allowances over seven years to a “service company” run by his wife and daughter.

Unlike Mr Chichester, Mr Dover has not been shown to have broken any European Parliament rules and stepped down when the party’s new group leader chose another man for his Chief Whip.

A Lib Dem MEP called for all parties to go beyond the Brussels rules for reporting expenses and establish a higher British standard for open accounting of public money. Chris Davies, who this year disclosed a secret Brussels report on expenses scams, said: “The Chichester affair has provoked another furore over MEP expenses in the UK, but there will not be a mention of it in the Italian, Greek or Romanian press. The Parliament may be incapable of reforming itself. Dutch, Scandinavian and British campaigners will never secure a majority in favour of radical improvement while there is no pressure on others to vote for change.” He urged British political parties to negotiate an agreement emphasising financial transparency and annual independent auditing of MEPs’ accounts.

Mr Cameron insisted that the Conservatives would meet higher standards and that they would be guaranteed by Mr Thomas, a barrister and ordained minister who worked as head of compliance at Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management.

Mr Cameron said: “Hugh Thomas has been tasked by me to do all that we can to reinforce the clear message I have sent on the issue of expenses. MEPs - like MPs – must meet the highest possible standards with accountability and transparency.”

The temporary Conservative group leader, Philip Bushill-Matthews, employs his wife as his secretary. He is more aware than most MEPs of the way their generous expenses are seen in Britain. His book about Brussels life is called The Gravy Train.

Explaining Mr Dover’s departure, he said: “The office of Chief Whip to the Conservative MEP delegation is in the gift of the leader of the delegation, and is a personal appointment. As such it automatically lapses on the departure of the leader.”

Mr Dover said that his wife and daughter “get market rates but they put in two or three times the number of hours. They just never stop, it is a 24-hours-a-day job”.

Accounts for Mr Dover’s service company, MP Holdings, show that it spent £56,000 on motor expenses and £19,000 on travel, which Mr Dover said were legitimate expenses. “I am totally within the rules and regulations of the European Parliament,” he said.

“I am not a director, have no share-holdings, have no payments from any outside company.”

Last night Mr Cameron’s efforts to appear tough were dealt a blow when the party’s chairman, Caroline Spelman, defended her own staffing arrangements.

Ms Spelman admitted that when she became an MP in 1997 she employed as a constituency assistant a woman who also looked after her children, but insists that the staff member fully earned her taxpayer-funded salary.

A Conservative spokesman said that the woman had worked from 9am to 3pm on constituency work, Monday to Friday, and had only done child-care and other household chores outside those hours. But Tina Haynes told Newsnight on BBC Two that she had been Ms Spelman’s nanny and had combined that role with “odd secretarial” duties.

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