THE House of Commons Speaker was embroiled in an extraordinary and unseemly row last night over whether a senior aide within his office had tried to leak damaging information about Labour MPs to Michael Howard.

Parliamentary sources have told The Times that this was the reason for the abrupt departure this week of John Stonborough, who had worked for the past three years as a public relations consultant to Michael Martin.

It is being suggested that Mr Stonborough, a respected figure in the communications industry, quit two days after being confronted about an e-mail apparently sent under his name that included material about MPs’ expenses designed to embarrass the Labour Party.

The Speaker, who has himself been embarrassed by the incident, has secretly admitted to colleagues that the e-mail appears to have been intended for Guy Black, Mr Howard’s press secretary.

However, it is understood that it was discovered after being mistakenly sent to Teresa Black, whose name is very likely to have appeared immediately after the Tory spin-doctor in the sender’s contact book. Ms Black, who works in the office of Ian Stewart, the Labour MP for Eccles, declined to comment yesterday.

Any suggestion that a senior figure in the Speaker’s office, which must maintain strict political impartiality and confidentiality, might have considered leaking information in such a way will alarm MPs.

However, ministers have long harboured suspicions over the way that the Conservative Party has appeared to be “ahead of the game” in relation to MPs’ expenses and other subjects.

Mr Martin, himself a long-serving Labour MP, has leant heavily on the services of his PR adviser since hiring him to steady the rocky start of his tenure as Speaker.

Mr Stonborough announced that he was returning to private practice after successfully overseeing publication, for the first time last month, of individual MPs’ expenses claims.

The disclosure of income from allowances was a sensitive issue within Parliament, where Labour and the Tories agreed a “non-aggression” pact under which they would not seek to make political capital about individual claims.

Mr Stonborough told The Times: “I categorically deny having sent anything to Michael Howard’s office.”

The denial that he had sent material to Mr Howard’s office does not, however, rule out the possibility that he had sent it elsewhere by mistake. Asked if he had sent material about Labour expenses claims to other people or if he was aware of allegations about leaks from the Speaker’s office, he replied: “I have some strictures about what I can say and what I cannot say about the House of Commons.”

Mr Black also emphasised that he had not received any information from Mr Stonborough. He added that he had not been in contact with Mr Stonborough since taking up his post in Mr Howard’s team.

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