John Whittingdale accepted free hospitality at a London lapdancing club while he was chairing a Commons culture, media and sport select committee that was investigating the impact of new laws intended to curb the spread of such venues.

The visit to a strip club took place in 2008 when he and two other MPs on the committee accepted an invitation from the Lap Dancing Association, where they dined with the club owner and two lapdancers and spent some time on the dancefloor.

The visit does not appear to have been documented in the records of the committee’s inquiry, but Whittingdale’s office said on Tuesday it was a fact-finding mission to “see the security arrangements, rules and impact on the local community”. His spokeswoman added that because there were three members and the committee clerk in attendance the committee was quorate and the visit “formed part of the inquiry”.

News of the club visit comes after it emerged that Whittingdale had a relationship with a woman he did not realise was a sex worker, who worked as a dominatrix in a “dungeon” in west London.

Then on Sunday, it was reported that Whittingdale sent a picture of a private gathering of ministers at Chequers to his then girlfriend, a former Page 3 model he had met on a dating website. It was also reported that the divorced father of two had relationships with several east European women, including the daughter of a former Soviet military officer.

The visit to the strip club was also attended by Conservative MP Philip Davies and Labour’s Janet Anderson, as well as the clerk.

“Members had dinner with the managers of the club and the association, and two girls employed there,” Whittingdale’s spokeswoman said. “The girls were keen to refute the claim made by [women’s rights group] Object that they were being exploited and to emphasise the strict controls in place in the club. John did not meet any girls except those at the dinner who talked to him about Object.”

“The visit was at my instigation,” Anderson said. “We were doing an inquiry which involved lapdancing clubs and I said I have never been into one and have no idea of what goes on inside. I asked if we could go and have a look.

“It wasn’t really strippers,” she added. “There was a woman dancing around a pole who was scantily clad, but she didn’t strip.”

Adrian Sanders, a former Lib Dem MP who was on the committee at the time, said he had not known about the visit.

“The committee had a discussion and somebody suggested we should go to a lapdancing club,” he said. “One or two of us thought that was totally inappropriate. I can’t remember a decision to go being made in committee. It wasn’t necessary.

“If you wanted to discuss issues affecting the community, which I think is his defence, you invite them in. The representatives of the industry were going to talk to us anyway, you don’t need to see them in their environment.”

He added: “We’ve seen enough to know about what happens in a lapdancing club without going there ourselves.”

Davies said the committee was investigating whether strip clubs should be reclassified as places where sexual encounters took place under the licensing laws.

“I would have thought that the story was the DCMS select committee actually finds out about what they are reporting on,” he said. “It was a very dull visit in many respects. It certainly wasn’t a night of debauchery.”