The Tories have accused Labour of wasting taxpayer's money on special advisers who exert a "malign influence" over government and the political system.

In a Commons debate on the cost of government, Tory Cabinet Office spokesman Andrew Lansley warned how the role of civil servants offering impartial advice was under threat from "Labour's machinery of spin and disinformation".

Mr Lansley told MPs: "Vital as it is to increase the resources for health and other key public services the responsibility that goes with it, placed upon government, is to ensure that taxpayers' money is spent effectively.

"The public want to know: 'where is the money going?"'

He said "billions" was going on Labour's failure to reform the welfare system and he spoke of a "startling" rise in the cost of running central government.

But Cabinet Office Minister Mo Mowlam dismissed Mr Lansley's remarks as "inaccurate" and "unfair".

The exchanges follow a report last week by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Lord Neill, which recommended a new code of conduct for special advisors and a limit to their number.

Mr Lansley said £2.3bn more had been spent by Labour in two years on administration than proposed in the plans the goverment inherited.

"It adds insult to injury to the taxpayer to pay more in taxes only to find it being wasted by this government or squandered on Labour's machinery of spin and disinformation," he continued.

Mr Lansley, a former civil servant, said he found it "profoundly depressing" the qualities and values of that profession were at risk of being undermined by the pressure for political correctness and compliance demanded by Labour ministers and their paid political advisers.

Labour had "doubled" the number of special advisers and in Downing Street alone there were now 25 special advisers compared to eight under John Major's administration, he said.

"Of immediate concern to us, however, is the malign influence which these advisers are having both on government and the body politic."

Mr Lansley accused advisers of seeing themselves as "extensions of their ministers" and briefing against other ministers and civil servants.

He told MPs that advisers had made more than 170 overseas visits and "insert themselves into the chain of ministerial decision-making superior to, rather than complementary with, the impartial sources of advice on which ministers should rely".

But Ms Mowlam said the government had already begun to reduce costs and improve accountability in political life.

"We have spent less on Whitehall bureaucracy than the previous government," she said.

Ms Mowlam said Lord Neill had stated that special advisers had a "valuable role to play" and she denied they were leading to the politicising of the civil service.

They were doing the opposite because civil servants no longer had to get involved in party political tasks such as writing conference speeches.

She went on to defend the role of the Prime Minister's controversial press secretary Alastair Campbell.

"His contract makes clear that he is employed to speak to the media on the government's behalf," she said.

"He expresses not his own views but most of those of the prime minister and he avoids personal attacks," she said.

For the Liberal Democrats, Malcolm Bruce said the Tories had also made wide use of special advisers.

Margaret Thatcher's press secretary Bernard Ingham had spun against ministers, he said.

But he suggested it was possible the current government was imposing a more political management on the civil service.

Mr Bruce said the Westminster Parliament was "pretty weak and ineffective" compared to many others.

"This is because the executive doesn't use Parliament as part of the process," he added.

A Tory motion attacking "the government's reliance on spin-doctoring and bureaucracy in place of support for public services" was defeated by 331 to 179.

A government amendment was carried by 327 to 162.