MPs across Merseyside will be forced to sack wives and husbands under a ban on employing family members due to be announced within weeks.

Eleven of the region’s MPs will be hit if the Kelly inquiry – set up after the expenses scandal earlier this year – rules relatives should no longer staff their offices.

Sir Christopher Kelly’s Committee on Standards in Public Life is widely tipped to recommend the ban in an explosive report to be issued on the eve of Guy Fawkes Night.

But it is certain to trigger fury among many of the 202 MPs who currently employ family members.

The move could be resented even more than a second likely strand of the Kelly report – the outlawing of taxpayer help to buy second homes – with MPs expected to rent instead.

Today Wavertree MP Jane Kennedy condemned the likely decision, describing it as one made “with no understanding of the role played by people working for MPs”.

She has worked closely with her now partner, Peter, since fighting Militant together in the 1980s and he has been her agent since 1992.

Ms Kennedy said: “MPs need a high degree of trust in the people they work with, because they are absent from the office so much of the time.