Jack Straw denies any wrongdoing during his career

Jack Straw, Labour MP for Blackburn and former foreign secretary, and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, also an ex-foreign secretary, and chair of the intelligence and security select committee, have been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party after being secretly filmed apparently offering services to a private company for cash.

Both politicians have denied wrongdoing and have referred themselves to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

He told the BBC’s Today programme this morning that he is “irritated and angry” about how his recorded conversation has been interpreted, but is not embarrassed. “These are very serious allegations,” he warned. “They are unfounded and I’m going to fight them with all my strength.”

Straw has been voluntarily suspended temporarily from the Labour party, “because of the way this appears”, rather than because he feels he has broken the rules. Although he says he is “mortified” at falling into “a very skilful trap”, he insists that his use of language during the conversation was not “necessarily wrong but can be taken out of context”. However, he did “regret the fact that I ever saw these people”.

He said he has “been absolutely scrupulous” during his 36 years in parliament, adding that the company wanted his services “once I’d left” (he is standing down in May). “The discussion with this bogus Chinese Hong Kong company was not about what I was going to do as a member of parliament,” he argued.