Is somebody out to get Peter Hain - again? I say again because of the way he was framed as a bank robber by the South African security services in 1975, when - to declare an interest - I was editor of the Sunday Times, which had a hand in his acquittal at the Old Bailey. We helped to show that a body double had been employed to implicate Hain, as punishment for his campaign to disrupt a tour of Britain by South Africa's all-white cricket and rugby teams.
Nobody would want to suggest that Hain's ordeal in 2008 is due to any comparable vindictiveness on the part of the Electoral Commission, the commissioners being all honourable men (and one honourable woman). After all, they were only doing their duty, were they not, in setting the police on to Hain? He had been found guilty of trying to win an election for the deputy leadership of the Labour party, so what could he expect - a medal for honesty? - when he himself came forward to say he had discovered that his campaign had received rather more than £103,00 on top of the £77,000 it had reported?
And just look at the company Hain is in over this matter of receiving money and failing to report it in a timely manner: Boris Johnson! David Cameron! Nick Clegg! Michael Howard! Harriet Harman!
These four honourable men (and one woman) are just a few of the hundreds of defaulters - many others were recipients of money decreed impermissible under the rules designed to achieve transparency. In fact, in the three months after Hain resigned from the cabinet as secretary of state for Wales and secretary for work and pensions, on January 24 2008, no fewer than 158 donations to members of parliament were reported late to the commission, totalling £736,382 and 46pence. Some of those defaulters were rather more tardy than Hain: he was six months late (while Harman was three months late). But some donations declared in 2008 went back to 2001, and the commission is unable or unwilling to divulge any details about them.
With investigations into all the defaulters, the police have been run off their feet when they might have been out catching a City embezzler or two. Well, not quite. All the prominent aforementioned defaulters were spared the knock on the front door. The Electoral Commission issued reprimands, but it did not call in Scotland Yard. The police also dropped their inquiry into Harman's acceptance of an impermissible £5,000 by proxy from the property developer David Abrahams, though she went on to win the deputy leadership. (Abrahams faced claims of breaking electoral law by using other people's names to conceal himself as the source of that £5,000, and £610,000 altogether for the Labour party; Gordon Brown and Hilary Benn were smart enough to reject proxy money.)
It strikes me that the impermissible donations raise more issues than self-confessed lateness, unacceptable though late reporting is. In the rich catalogue of political misdemeanours, why did the commissioners single out Hain for a criminal investigation when, having volunteered the information himself, he clearly had no intention to commit a crime? I would like to know.
The commission is accountable to parliament through the Speaker's committee, and it should be made to explain its apparent discrimination - all the more so since the MP who sits on the committee and answers for the Electoral Commission in parliament is Sir Peter Viggers (the Conservative MP for Gosport). Viggers, another honourable man, is yet another defaulter. He took a trip to the Gulf in October 2004, but didn't report it to the commission he serves until March 2007. Hello.
The commission has now, of course, accepted the judgment of the Crown Prosecution Service clearing Peter Hain of guilt - but it can't be left at that. The Guardian website has contributions from citizens fretful that Hain has been let off lightly. Not so. He has been most shabbily treated, and his ordeal continues. Not only was a surging career uniquely set back by the commission, but its action inflicted sizable legal costs. Now John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, will have his turn with the thumbscrews, having deferred his own inquiry while the police conducted theirs.
Gordon Brown has recognised that Hain "has much to offer in the future". I hope he soon follows up on the good words by finding a strong place for Hain in the cabinet. Maybe, moreover, all those other defaulters who were not subjected to such an ordeal will feel guilty enough to send him a donation (and remember to tell the Electoral Commission).
Harold Evans is a former editor of the Times and the Sunday Times
· This article was amended on Tuesday December 9 2008. Michael Howard was added as a member of parliament that received money and failed to report it in a timely manner.