Tim Yeo, the Tory grandee and former environment minister, has rejected allegations that he used his position on a Commons select committee to help business clients.
In a lengthy statement, the chairman of the energy and climate change select committee dismissed a claim by the Sunday Times that he had coached the managing director of a company before he appeared before his committee as "totally untrue".
"Today's Sunday Times makes a number of damaging allegations about me. I want to make clear that I totally reject these allegations," Yeo said. The former minister issued his statement shortly after he pulled out of interviews on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News and Sunday Politics on BBC1.
His move followed a report by the Sunday Times Insight team alleging he had told undercover reporters he could use his contacts to further the interests of clients. The reporters were pretending to act on behalf of a fictitious South Korean solar energy company.
Yeo told the Sunday Times he could not speak in public on behalf of clients, but could talk to ministers in private. He was quoted as saying: "What I say to people in private is another matter altogether." He added: "If you want to meet the right people, I can facilitate all those introductions and I can use the knowledge I get from what is quite an active network of connections."
Yeo, who has referred himself to the parliamentary standards watchdog, said in his statement: "The Sunday Times has chosen to quote very selectively from a recording obtained clandestinely during a conversation of nearly an hour and a half in a restaurant with two undercover reporters who purported to be representing a client from South Korea.
My lawyer requested the whole recording from which these extracts were obtained but this has not been given." The former minister, who was a leading moderniser long before David Cameron was converted to the cause, was quoted by the Sunday Times as telling the undercover reporters he had advised John Smith, the managing director of GB Railfreight, before he gave evidence to his committee.
Yeo, a director of GB Railfreight's parent company Eurotunnel, recused himself from his duties as chairman when Smith gave evidence, but he told the Insight team: "I was able to tell him in advance what he should say."
In his statement on Sunday Yeo said:"I travelled with John Smith and two other people in the cab of a freight train for three hours on 16 May, five days before he appeared before my committee. I spoke briefly to Mr Smith about his forthcoming appearance in front of the committee to explain that because of the business connection between us I would not take part in questioning him.
I did not want him to think that my silence indicated a lack of interest in what he was saying. "I did not 'coach' John Smith on this or any other occasion. He is not a 'paying client' as the Sunday Times alleges but a business colleague.
Like many business executives giving evidence to select committees he sought advice from the public affairs company retained for the purpose by GB Rail Freight." Yeo also said that at no point had he agreed to work for the reporters' fictitious company.
He said: "The whole recording would show the context of the conversation and demonstrate clearly that at no stage did I agree or offer to work for the fictitious company these undercover reporters claimed to be representing, still less did I commit to doing so for a day a month as the article claims."
He also said that he had immediately dismissed a request by the reporters to establish an all-party parliamentary group to help their fictitious client.
He said: "I refused to do this. After this refusal they pressed me to give them the names of MPs who would be interested in joining such a group. I refused to do this too."
Yeo said that the only document the Sunday Times mentioned was an email he had sent to the reporters saying that he had decided to withdraw from further discussions with them.
He relayed his decision after the reporters emailed him on the morning of 22 May to say they were withdrawing their offer of work.
In his statement Yeo said: "I am referring myself to the parliamentary standards commissioner because I wish to have this matter thoroughly investigated by an independent body. I am confident that I have acted in accordance with the MPs' code of conduct at all times."
The allegations about Yeo follow the announcement that three peers are to be investigated over allegations that they broke parliamentary rules over outside earnings after they were filmed by the Sunday Times.
The former cabinet minister Lord Cunningham and Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate have been suspended from the Labour party. Lord Laird has resigned from the Ulster Unionist party. Patrick Mercer, the MP for Newark, resigned the Tory whip after a BBC Panorama investigation showed him accepting money from people he believed to be lobbyists.
guardian.co.uk
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