Filkin says she will not respond to Speaker's challenge

Standards

Elizabeth Filkin has refused to respond to a challenge from Michael Martin, the Speaker of the Commons, to provide evidence of a whispering campaign against her.

Ms Filkin, the outgoing Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, said Mr Martin was well aware of information in the public domain – including from his predecessor, Baroness Boothroyd, and the former MP Martin Bell – suggesting her position had been undermined.

The clash follows a furious demand from the Speaker on Wednesday for Ms Filkin to provide evidence of the "pressure" she said was put on her during her three years in office.

Ms Filkin said: "I'm not responding. Robin Cook is reported in the press in August as trying to cool down a whispering campaign."

Mr Cook, the Leader of the House of Commons who is a member of the Commons Commission that will choose Ms Filkin's successor, backed away from an accusation by the Speaker that Ms Filkin had leaked her resignation letter. "It's now clear how it came out. It was published and was not a leak," Mr Cook said.

The Speaker has demanded an inquiry into how her resignation letter was leaked. As disclosed in The Independent, Ms Filkin published the letter only after Mr Martin's office disclosed some of it to the press – as she had told them she would.

Mr Cook rejected claims that the Commons had since downgraded the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards' job description to three days a week. He said that in 1998 "the job she applied for and advertised for which Ms Filkin got was for three days a week". But scrutiny of the job description shows that, unlike the advertisement for the new appointment, it did not specify a three-day-a-week job.