London: Two former foreign secretaries denied any wrongdoing on Monday after they were filmed offering a fictitious Hong Kong company access to politicians in return for payment.

Filmed with a hidden camera by Channel 4 television and the Daily Telegraph newspaper, the two serving members of parliament appeared to quote sums for advising the fake public relations firm.

Asked about the cost of his services, Jack Straw, who was foreign minister in the last Labour government, said: “Normally, if I’m doing a speech or something, it’s £5,000 a day.”

Channel 4 said Straw told the undercover journalists that he had operated “under the radar” to use his influence to change European Union rules on behalf of a commodity firm which paid him £60,000 a year.

It said he “claimed to have used ‘charm and menace’ to convince the Ukrainian prime minister to change laws on behalf of the same firm”.

Straw was suspended from the Labour Party on Monday at his own request.

He said his discussion with the fictitious company only related to his plans for after he leaves parliament.

“I’m mortified about what happened,” Straw said. “This is a sophisticated deception.”

He denied breaching the rules for conduct of serving members of parliament.

“I’ve complied with the spirit, not just the letter, of the rules,” Straw said.

The second politician, Malcolm Rifkind, who served as foreign secretary and in other ministerial posts in Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s, rejected the “sordid, unfounded allegations” against him.

“I will fight them all the way,” Rifkind told the BBC.

Straw was Labour foreign secretary when Britain helped invade Iraq in 2003.

The allegations come 10 weeks before a knife-edge general election in Britain and threaten to put the issue of political ethics back on the agenda.

While members of parliament are not banned from topping up their earnings by working for private companies, there are strict rules around how they should do so, including declaring all interests on a public register and not using parliamentary resources in doing so.

Next big scandal

Five years ago, Cameron warned that corporate lobbying was the “next big scandal” waiting to hit parliament.

Straw and Rifkind both took to the airwaves Monday to launch strong defences.

Straw, who has suspended himself from the Labour Party, insisted he had been discussing work he might do after stepping down as an MP after the election following 36 years in office.

“There are very, very strict rules here about what members of parliament can and can’t do,” he told BBC radio.

“I absolutely kept not only to their letter but also to their spirit.”

Rifkind, who chairs the parliamentary committee which oversees Britain’s intelligence services, vowed to fight the allegations “with all my strength”.

“I didn’t accept any offer. This was a preliminary discussion. I was not negotiating at all. I’m sorry, Channel 4 are very good at producing selective quotations out of context,” he said on BBC radio.

A spokesman for Cameron’s Downing Street office said that Rifkind had referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, which investigates allegations of rule breaking by MPs.

A Labour Party spokeswoman told AFP: “We have seen the disturbing allegations against Jack Straw.

“He has agreed to refer himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and in the meantime he has agreed the best course of action is to suspend himself from the Parliamentary Labour Party.”

The Telegraph said journalists had contacted 12 lawmakers in the investigation, six of whom did not respond and one who said his contacts were not “for sale”.

The newspaper previously exposed a major scandal over MPs’ lavish expenses in 2009 which revealed that lawmakers had claimed public money for everything from a floating duck house to having their moat cleaned.

Its editorial on Monday said it was vital for MPs “to behave honourably and with total transparency so we can all judge the propriety of their actions for ourselves.”