BRITAIN:There was speculation about the position of British cabinet minister Peter Hain last night after he provided the Electoral Commission with details of more than £103,000 in donations to his Labour deputy leadership campaign that he had previously failed to declare.
Downing Street had earlier indicated that Mr Hain - the former Northern Ireland secretary, now work and pensions as well as Welsh secretary - retained Gordon Brown's confidence. However, opposition politicians were eagerly awaiting disclosure by the regulator of the sources of the funding, following earlier suggestions of potential embarrassment that Mr Hain's left-leaning campaign had relied on business support.
The Guardian newspaper first reported that Mr Hain, who had already declared £82,000 in donations, had failed to disclose amounts from a further 20 sources amounting to more than £100,000, taking his spending in the deputy leadership contest far ahead of any of the other candidates. Mr Hain came fifth out of six candidates to succeed former deputy leader John Prescott, who stood down last summer at the same time as former Labour leader and prime minister Tony Blair.
Mr Hain had already apologised for failing to declare a £5,000 donation from Mr Brown's own appointed fund-raiser, blaming "administrative failings". Last night he issued a statement blaming the pressures of his cabinet job for the latest failure, revealing also a scale of expenditure on the failed campaign that itself has astounded many Labour MPs at Westminster.
Mr Hain admitted he should have given "higher personal priority" to the day-to-day administration of his deputy leadership campaign. But he offered: "The fact is that during this period, I gave my campaign for office within the Labour Party second priority to my government responsibilities."
He went on: "I reasonably believed that the arrangements in place for my campaign would be sufficient to ensure compliance with reporting requirements, but as it transpired, due to administrative failings, this was not the case after early May."
Mr Hain's difficulty will be a cause of dismay inside 10 Downing Street, from where Mr Brown sought to relaunch his government this week, amid speculation that police will soon question key figures about the Labour Party's concealed donations affair.