Senior members of the European Parliament turned their fire on a whistle-blower for disclosing the existence of a confidential report into widespread misuse of expenses yesterday as they voted for it to stay secret.

Chris Davies, a Liberal Democrat who broke ranks to reveal that an internal auditor had found a number of scams being operated by MEPs, was attacked for misusing private information and for rarely turning up to committee meetings. MEPs on the Budget Control Committee voted by 21 to 14 not to publish the report, with the support of the two main groups in Parliament, the European People’s Party, which includes the Conservatives, and the Socialists, including Labour.

“We were crushed by the forces of darkness using procedural rules,” Mr Davies said. “I have been accused of bringing the Parliament into disrepute but I don’t think you should blame the messenger. It is those who practise activities akin to fraud who are bringing it into disrepute.”

The committee was supposed to cover the €¤107 billion (£80 billion) EU accounts, failed by the Court of Auditors for the thirteenth year in a row, but instead spent much of its time venting its spleen at Mr Davies and the auditor who wrote the report.

MEPs have been allowed a wide discretion over their annual assistance allowance of €185,952. Mr Davies disclosed that an internal auditor had detailed various scams used by some MEPs, sometimes without technically breaking the rules, to line their own pockets. One MEP paid a Christmas bonus to an assistant worth 19 times his salary, several others set up arms-length companies to pay expenses to bogus staff and others seemed to funnel money to their political parties while claiming to be paying assistants.

In the secret report, available for MEPs on the committee to read only in a sealed room after taking an oath of secrecy, the auditor also set out a series of recommendations for changes to ensure probity and transparency.

José Javier Pomés Ruiz, a Spanish EPP member, led the attack. “Coming along and saying ‘publish’ when you have not been involved in the process, I do not think that is 100 per cent honest,” he told Mr Davies. “If you look at the headlines and look at the report, there are great differences. Passing information to the press is a misuse of information and a misuse of parliamentary obligations.”

Mr Pomés Ruiz said that the appropriate body to carry out any investigation was Olaf, the EU anti-fraud office. Mr Davies pointed out that Olaf would not have known about the secret audit if he had not alerted the world to its existence. The auditor who wrote the report was attacked for “going above his competences” by Szabolcs Fazakas, a Hungarian Socialist.

Herbert Bösch, an Austrian Socialist and committee chairman, told Mr Davies that he was wasting his time calling for the report to be published. Speaking afterwards Mr Bösch insisted that there were areas of MEP expenditure that should remain private. “I will refuse any demand to have a look at my journeys or trips because sometimes you have to meet people off the agenda,” he said.

The only British voice raised in Mr Davies’s favour was by Ashley Mote, the disgraced independent MEP recently released from prison for fiddling British benefit payments. Chris Heaton-Harris, a Tory MEP, defied the EPP group line to vote for publication, calling the decision a huge missed opportunity.

Hans-Peter Martin, an Austrian MEP ostracised after he filmed some of his colleagues signing in for the day to collect their per diem allowance, then promptly leaving, said: “This Parliament is a paradise of unjustified privileges and possibilities for real cheats. It is a central problem for democracy and credibility in Europe.”

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