Tory denies paying staff £2.50 an hour

The claim about Alex Story, a former Olympic rower who is standing in Wakefield, was made to David Cameron yesterday by a journalist on his visit to Coca Cola's distribution centre in West Yorkshire.

Mr Story, who was at the event and seeks to defeat Labour's Mary Creagh, insisted afterwards that the claim was "absolutely outrageous".

"We had a young girl, whose name I forgot, who was shadowing one of my nannies because my first son has Down's Syndrome so he needs to get used to a nanny before the nanny can take him to school because of his condition," he said.

"So we gave her some pocket money to come and to pay her expenses for shadowing but she wasn't actually working, she was just walking around with the children, and the actual nanny was with her at the time with the children."

Father-of-three Mr Story said he paid an adult nanny 6 an hour to look after his children, and that the girl who was shadowing had been paid about 5 for about two hours.

He claimed the story emerged because Labour was scared of losing the Wakefield seat.

Mr Cameron did not comment on the claim.