Caroline Spelman, the Conservative party chairman, has answered critics who say she misused public funds to pay a nanny by saying it was a practical solution to deal with an unusually large workload.

Mrs Spelman told reporters outside her home today that the arrangement with Tina Haines, her childminder, was a temporary measure for a short period after her election in 1997 to allow her to deal with a backlog of correspondance caused by the unexpected death of Iain Mills, her predecessor in her Meriden seat.

But she added that she would be meeting John Lyon, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, on Monday to discuss the matter.

Mrs Spelman said: "(Tina) would deal with the secretarial side of things while the children where in school and after school provide child care for my kids. I thought that was a good solution, within the rules. The Chief Whip advised me that, while within the rules, the arrangement could be open to misinterpretation and Tina ceased to work for me in that capacity.

"My prime concern was to make sure that my constituents’ needs were rapidly attended to as a new MP.

"At the time, I thought I was entirely within the rules, and that is still my belief, but I will refer this series of events to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner."

On Friday night BBC2’s Newsnight programme claimed Ms Haines had almost exclusively been employed as a childminder between 1997-98.

This morning Mrs Spelman was backed by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor. “I know Caroline personally and she is literally the last person in Parliament who would want to do something wrong,” he said.

The question mark over Mrs Spelman’s expenses comes in the wake of the resignation of Giles Chichester, the Tory leader in the European Parliament, who transferred more than £400,000 of staff expenses into a private family company.

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

The fact that Mrs Spelman’s own expenses claims are now being subjected to public scrutiny is particularly embarrassing for David Cameron, the Conservative leader, because it was the party chairman herself who issued a deadline to Mr Chichester to justify his actions.

Ms Haines worked for Mrs Spelman for five years from 1997 to 2002, for the first year of which she was paid money from parliamentary allowances. Elaborating on Mrs Spelman's explanation, a party spokesman said: “When first elected as an MP Caroline Spelman employed Tina Haines as constituency secretary. Tina was paid from her parliamentary allowance for the work she carried out providing secretarial support in the constituency.

“Tina also provided childcare outside school hours and in return for this she received free board and lodging along with use of a car provided at Caroline’s personal expense."

But Newsnight said that when its reporter asked Ms Haines about her work for Mrs Spelman, she replied: “I was working for her as a nanny for five and and half years.”

Pressed on whether she was also doing political work, she said: “No I wasn’t. Once or twice a week you would get the odd phone call from other MPs.

“(Then Conservative leader William) Hague rang a couple of times and obviously I took messages if he rang and passed them on to Caroline.

“I did obviously do odd secretarial work for her - took phone calls and if there were any documents that needed posting, I did things like that for her.”

Newsnight said Ms Haines told its reporter she could not remember how many hours a week she spent on secretarial duties. But, asked if the bulk of her work was as a nanny, the programme said she replied: “Yeah, I did nannying, yeah.”

Kevan Jones, a Labour MP, told the programme: “David Cameron talks about honesty and transparency in public life, but in a matter of two days his sleazebuster appointed to Europe has had to resign because of questions over his expenses, and now his party chairman Caroline Spelman has a big question mark over how she has been using hers.

“If Caroline Spelman can’t explain how she spent these expenses, it has to be referred to the Commissioner.”

Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, said the matter should be dealt with by the standards commissioner.

Mr Graham said: “The Caroline Spelman issue, I think, has to be dealt with by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Presumably somebody will make a complaint and ... he will carry out a full investigation and report to the appropriate House of Commons committee.”

Mr Graham said the constant flow of stories about MPs’ and MEPs’ expenses was very damaging for the reputation of politics, and called for a radical change to the system, led by a body independent of Parliament.

“Large numbers of MPs have been found to be using their allowances for matters that most of us would find rather puzzling (from the point of view of) being in direct relationship with support for their work as an MP,” he said. “It is doing enormous damage to them and they do have to realise that looking after these affairs for themselves will no longer do.”

Speaking from Washington DC, Mr Osborne told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think there is a broader issue with political expenses, whether it is MEPs or MPs, and the answer, surely, is much greater transparency and a culture of openness, so people can see how public money is spent.

“I welcome that and I know it is something David Cameron welcomes, because he has been leading the way.

“For example, when it comes to the MEPs, it is David Cameron who is, as far as I am aware, the only party leader saying to his MEPs ’Let’s publish our expenses, even though the European Parliament doesn’t require this’.

“I would greatly welcome the Labour Party agreeing with that and then we could have a system which doesn’t just apply to the Conservative Party but applies across the parties.”

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