A BID to keep secret the details of MPs £87m-a-year expenses claims was abandoned today after an embarrassing climbdown by Gordon Brown.

Amid rising public anger, the prime minister scrapped a vote, due on Thurs, which would have exempted MPs from the Freedom Of Information Act and blocked a High Court ruling.

The surprise decision clears the way for the Commons authorities to release a staggering 1.2m receipts for MPs’ expenses going back over the past three years, possibly within weeks.

Some MPs are reported to have said privately that the detailed information in the claims - for everything from travel and office running costs to furniture in second homes - could force them to resign, if revealed.

But Birkenhead MP Frank Field, who had attacked the planned vote, said the U-turn had come too late to prevent the reputation of parliament sinking further.

The Labour backbencher said: "At the 11th hour and 59th minute the government has seen sense, but people will still be rightly outraged - because this is their money."

The climbdown came after website campaigns urged the public to email their MP to protest and a full-page advert was taken out in one national newspaper condemning the move as "shameless".

It triggered a furious row between Labour and the Conservatives, amid allegations of double-dealing over an alleged cross-party agreement to exempt MPs from FoI.

Labour had announced it was imposing a three-line whip on its MPs to force through the exemption, believing it had Tory support. The Liberal Democrats were always opposed.

But, late on Tuesday, the Conservatives announced they would also block the exemption - leaving Labour facing the own-goal of expenses being kept secret purely because of the votes of its MPs.

The scale of the confusion was illustrated by the fact that, just one hour before the U-turn, Downing Street briefed reporters that the vote would go ahead and defended it.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, welcomed the