Prime Minister Bill English has continued his string of backtracks and U-turns regarding what he knew about outgoing junior MP Todd Barclay's secret taping of an electorate staffer.

In a television interview aired on Saturday morning, the Prime Minister suggested that the covertly-recorded tapes might not even exist.

But in a press conference at the National Party conference on Sunday, English revealed that Barclay had offered his boss the chance to listen to the recordings.

"Did he offer to play me the recording? Ah, yes he did," English said.

The Prime Minister said he declined to listen to them.

Early last week, when new details of the taping scandal were revealed by investigative website Newsroom.co.nz, Bill English said he could not recall who had first told him that Barclay had recorded his own staff.

However later in the day, English clarified that it was Barclay himself who had told him.

Barclay, successor to English in the Clutha-Southland seat, announced his resignation on Wednesday after repeatedly denying that he had done anything wrong.

It's further been alleged Barclay made up complaints about the staffer's conduct to push her out.

The staffer was paid an extra large amount from ex-Prime Minister John Key's leader's fund as settlement for her privacy having been breached.

The 27-year-old MP also refused to co-operate with police while they were investigating the secret taping in 2015, despite publicly saying that he would.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that if the investigation was reopened by police, Barclay should co-operate, but "I respect his legal rights to make his own decisions about how he's represented in what action he takes."

Meanwhile, Labour leader Andrew Little called for the recordings to be released to the public to clear up any misunderstandings.

"Why has it got this far?" Little asked. "Why are we seeing these different stories and different version just within the last week alone?"

"It starts to look like there's something more significant here, and I reckon that's something to do with what is possibly on those tapes."

"It looks like they're trying to conceal something from us."

ACT Leader David Seymour can't understand why Barclay didn't remove his electorate staffer earlier, rather than secretly recording them, which is illegal.

Seymour relates that there are clear methods for sacking staffers in the system MPs operate under.

"The kid should have been looked after better back when all of this was occurring," Seymour said. "He was clearly undermined by his own staff and nobody in the National Party hierarchy thought to say to him 'Look, you can fire people for any reason'."

"Recording them is just incredibly stupid."