David Cameron has sought to draw a line under the Tory funding row by announcing the party is to publish details of all dinners attended by major donors who have given more than £50,000.

Hours after the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, said details would not be released, Downing Street published a list of dinners in Downing Street attended by 11 donors and their spouses.

The move came as Ed Miliband intensified the pressure on the prime minister by announcing he is to reply to a Commons statement this afternoon by Maude.

The prime minister began a speech on dementia in central London by announcing a series of measures following the resignation of the party's treasurer, Peter Cruddas, who admitted selling access to Cameron and other senior ministers.

Shortly after his speech, the party published details of four dinners in Downing Street attended by "major" donors. They were:

• 14 July 2010 in No 10 attended by Murdoch Maclennan, the chief executive of the Telegraph Media Group, and the veteran Tory donor Anthony Bamford and his wife Carole.

• 28 February 2011 in the prime minister's flat above No 11 Downing Street attended by David Rowland and the Tory co-chair Lord Feldman. Rowland had stood down as Tory treasurer in August 2010 after just two months in the post following a campaign against him orchestrated by a senior Tory.

• 2 November 2011 in the prime minister's No 11 flat attended by the veteran Tory donor Michael Farmer and his wife and by Henry and Dorothy Angest.

• 27 February 2012 in the No 11 flat attended by the former Tory treasurer and Cameron friend Michael Spencer and his wife.

Speaking on Radio 4's The World at One, Jack Straw, the former Labour foreign secretary, said of the U-turn: "This is symptomatic of pandemonium that has broken out inside the Conservative party at the highest reaches of government. Why on earth could they not have said this on Saturday night?"

Straw criticised the Tories after the prime minister announced that the Tory peer and lawyer Lord Gold would take charge of a party inquiry into funding. Cameron said:

• The Conservative party would publish details every quarter of "any meals attended by any major donors, whether they take place at Downing Street, Chequers or any official residence".

• The Conservative party would publish a register of major donors who attend the Leaders' Group. This is open to anyone who donates at least £50,000 a year to the party.

• Nobody in the No 10 policy unit met anyone suggested by Cruddas, who had said he had passed on concerns to the No 10 policy committee. Cameron said there was no such committee. But he said that in future, if any ministerial contact with a party donor prompted a request for policy advice, the minister would refer it to his or her private office who could seek advice from the department's permanent secretary.

• All political parties needed to embark on a renewed push for reform of party funding. Cameron said there should be a £50,000 cap on donations. "I am ready to impose a cap on individual political donations of £50,000, without any further need for state funding. But to be fair this must apply equally to trade unions as well as private citizens. We could do that tomorrow, and take the big money out of British politics once and for all," he said.

Straw rejected this, telling The World at One: "I noticed that Mr Cameron said he would be happy with a donation cap of £50,000. I am not surprised because all the modelling shows that if you have a cap of £50,000 this hugely biases the funding system in favour of the Conservatives. If you are going to have a cap it must be lower."

Labour said Ed Miliband would be appearing in the Commons to focus attention on the prime minister. A Labour source said: "This is about David Cameron's conduct. It is about his dinner parties, his policy unit."

Earlier, Maude insisted the Tories would not disclose details of private meetings between Cameron and party donors in the wake of claims by Cruddas that large cash payments could secure intimate dinners with the prime minister.

Maude said demands for a list of visitors to Cameron's flat in Downing Street were unreasonable, but insisted the party had nothing to hide.

Tony Blair's former chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, who called for private meetings at Downing Street to be revealed, said he was not aware of any such meetings having taken place at No 10 or Chequers when Blair was prime minister.

The Tories launched their own inquiry on Sunday after the resignation of Cruddas, whose claims that private meetings could help donors influence policy were filmed by undercover Sunday Times reporters. Mark Adams, a Labour supporter and lobbyist, has reported the matter to police. "The article indicates that the party has done this before," he said.

Maude told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This is a bit of a nonsense. This obsession with the fact that … someone like Michael Spencer – who has been treasurer of the party, who is a personal friend of the prime minister and the prime minister's wife – may have gone to supper at the prime minister's expense in his private residence, which happens to be in Downing Street.

"The fact that that happens does not mean that what you get as a donor to the party is the ability to be invited to Downing Street as a guest of the prime minister."

Earlier, Maude told ITV's Daybreak: "The key thing to say about Peter Cruddas is that actually what he was saying was both wrong and not true … No one in the treasurer's department knew he was having that meeting and actually we are pretty meticulous about doing these things properly.

"He had been told that there are very strict rules around how you raise money and he was off on a bit of private enterprise there."

Levy told Today that Blair, who faced allegations that the Formula One boss, Bernie Ecclestone, had sought to influence policy in 1997, had not to his knowledge met fundraisers at No 10 or Chequers.

"Until there is a change in the system, this is going to continually happen in one form or another. I do not really want to personalise this but one has to say that a party cannot have their policy directorate open," he said.

"Any meetings that are held must be disclosed. I certainly never gave any form of access to policy. That was something that was absolutely banned."

Cross-party talks on the funding of political parties, which were due to start in a few weeks, have been brought forward to this week.