The London Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh is reporting that Spelman will be cleared of wrongdoing over her taxpayer funded nanny.

If, as sources claim, the Lyon inquiry reports that there is no evidence of deliberate wrongdoing or a breach of Commons rules, Cameron will not sack her from the Shadow Cabinet.

This will infuriate many parents who have to pay for childcare out of post-tax income, to pay a nanny costs middle-class parents some £40,000 a year in pre-tax income. No private sector employer will pay for a nanny. We are expected to believe that Spelman’s nanny was actually her constituency secretary* paid for by the taxpayer and that in return for her childcare duties her only compensation was room and board. Who really believes that the money was not payment for her childcare duties? Unbelievable, it simply does not wash.

If anyone knows of a nanny willing to work for only room and board can you please let Mrs Fawkes know, because we have never heard of such a deal. This is a complete and utter piss-take out of the taxpayer. Here is the acid test – if it really was completely above board and as she claims – why stop the arrangement?

Before anyone complains that she is a woman and she was new in a tough job, bear in mind that her and her husband are more than wealthy enough to afford a nanny. She is a smart, tough cookie, not some weak innocent. She has been caught abusing the system, at the very least she should pay back the money she fiddled.

*Spelman’s family home at the time was in Kent, some 140 miles from her West Midlands constituency. The nanny, Tina Haynes, told Michael Crick last year that she also took occasional phone messages and posted documents. For this she was paid tens of thousands of pounds.