Peter Hain

Background

Peter Hain was born in Kenya and brought up in South Africa. He is described as having 'won fame in the Seventies for his campaigning against apartheid. So furious was the South African Secret Service about his activities that they even tried to frame him for a bank robbery in Putney in 1975, a bid that failed spectacularly when he was cleared at the Old Bailey'. Hain was a member of the Liberal Party until 1977 when he changed to Labour. The Express states that he 'has never been entirely trusted in his new political home. Admiration for his stance on South Africa has been mixed with suspicion about his intense ambition'. The report continues that in 'the Eighties, he was a noisy Left-winger, only to become a keen Blairite in the late Nineties, for which he has been rewarded with a string of Government posts'.

Hain was elected MP for Neath in 1991. He is described as a 'former Euro-sceptic' who went on to become Tony Blair's Europe minister. He is reported to have 'helped ease Stephen Byers out of his job as Transport Secretary when he told a magazine that Britain had the worst railways in Europe' (2002) and is suspected of leaking government documents to the media about considered plans to restore "stop under suspicion powers" to the police (2007). It is claimed that he was one of the first to publicly denounce the plans.

In 2006, Hain undertook a campaign to win the 'Labour deputy leadership race'. When this failed (he came 5th), Gordon Brown promoted him to Work and Pensions. In doing so it is reported that Brown calculated 'that Mr Hain's well-cultivated image as a Left-winger might make it easier for him to sell tough welfare reform plans' and that Brown banked 'on the minister's adaptability in accepting the new agenda'. Daily Express columnist Leo McKinstry describes the 'conceit and hypocrisy of Peter Hain' as 'breathtaking'.

mystery donations

A hitherto unknown thinktank that passed tens of thousands of pounds to Peter Hain's deputy leadership campaign has never published any work or held any meetings since its incorporation in December 2006. Concerns over the exact role of the Progressive Policies Forum mounted yesterday and threatened to undermine efforts by the work and pensions secretary to clear his name and explain how he and his team had failed to register more than £100,000 in donations to the Electoral Commission.

The Progressive Policy Forum was set up by John Underwood (former director of communications for the Labour Party, founder of Clear Communications, Business Development Director of Freshwater UK and former head of public relations for Neil Kinnock) in 2006, three month after the launch of Hain's campaign. The Forum channelled over £50,000 in donations and loans to Peter Hain's deputy leadership campaign. This included almost £15,000 from Isaac Kaye and a £5,000 donation and £25,000 loan from Willie Nagel (a diamond broker who was once a Conservative supporter). It is claimed that Nagel did not know that his donation and loan had gone to Hain. Underwood is also reported to have been responsible for running Hain's deputy leadership campaign 'in its early stages'. In 2008, Shipton of the Western Mail asked Hain to explain why the Progressive Policies Forum 'had apparently passed money donated to it across to his campaign very quickly after receiving it'. Hain did not give a direct answer to the question, instead he insisted that he had been open about his failure to report the money. It is claimed that the PPF 'was used to channel money from donors who did not want their names publicised'.

It is not only Underwood who has connections to Freshwater UK, as Hain appeared as a guest of honour at Freshwater's table at a Labour fund-raising dinner and publicly praised Freshwater as a "modern, dynamic company" that he wanted to see go "from strength to strength". He is reported to have "absolutely no regrets" over his links to the company.

In September 2006, Hain used a Fabian Society fringe meeting at the TUC conference in Brighton to announce he will be a candidate for Labour's deputy leadership.

One of the events where donations were secured was a fundraising dinner at the Park House Club in Cardiff, which was organised by Huw Roberts.

In December 2007, Hain first admitted to having failed to disclose a £5,000 donation on the Commons Register of MPs' Interests and to the Electoral Commission. 'Days later, the number of undeclared donations had soared to 17, totalling pounds 103,000'. The Western Mail reports that Hain admitted that he had failed to register a £5,000 donation to his campaign from Labour fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn in November 2007.

According to Settle, 'One source close to the Hain campaign told The Herald last night: "It was very shambolic and was not a campaign that merited anything like what was eventually spent. Where did all the money go? Where is the money?". It is reported that the total amount spent on the campaign was in excess of £180,000.

In regard to the PPF think tank, the Times is quoted as stating that

'it is now obvious that the sole purpose of this organisation was to provide ideas and policies that one contender for the deputy leadership, Mr Hain, might benefit from, yet the names of those who had bankrolled the enterprise would have remained secret. As events transpired, when the inept Hain campaign discovered that it had severely overspent its budget in its drive to capture fifth place in this election it instead turned to the dormant thinktank as a private piggy bank'.

The Guardian reports that Underwood argued in 2006, 'that a new leftwing thinktank was necessary to fill a gap formed by the closure of another thinktank, Catalyst'. Hain and 'others' are reported to have 'urged Underwood not to go ahead, since they feared such a thinktank would be trawling for donations from the same sources Hain was exploring to finance his campaign'.

The Times reports (in January 2008) that other likely candidates for questioning by Scotland Yard in relation to the failure to declare the donations could include Phil Woolas (the junior minister who helped to run Mr Hain's campaign), Phil Taylor (Hain's former special adviser) and Steve Morgan (Hain's former campaign manager). Morgan claims to have donated £5,000 to the think-tank (PPF) but to have had no involvement in its fundraising. According to the Daily Mail this 'fuels speculation that the decision to use the PPF for donations was taken by Mr Hain or Mr Under-wood'.

The Guardian describes Phil Woolas as Hain's campaign chairman (he is also climate change minister), who 'was not aware that the campaign had raised or spent £103,000 on top of the £82,000 which he and Hain formally reported to Labour in the summer'. Wollas 'is understood to be bemused about where this extra spending went'.

A separate investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner John Lyon (into complaints that £103,000 had not been entered into the Commons Register of Members' Interest), has been suspended while the police investigate and may be continued once the outcome of the Police inquiry is known.

It has been repeatedly stated that the failure to declare the funds was due to an 'innocent mistake'. However this means that there were 17 of these so called 'mistakes' and as McKinstry states, by Hain's 'own admission this was a clear breach of the rules on party funding, yet Hain has the gall to pre-tend that it was only a minor administrative oversight'. As McKinstry goes on to point out, 'Hain's department is running a campaign against social security abuses, warning that action will be taken against "people who withhold information or fail to report a change of circumstances". But that is precisely what the boss has done'. Hain's explaination as to the 'mistake'... he was 'too busy with his work as a minister to perform the task'. McKinstry sums up...

No magistrate would allow a fraudster to walk free from court on the grounds that he was "too busy" to state his income correctly. And if Hain is really as hopeless at administration as he claims, then he is hardly the right figure to be running the Department with the largest budget in Whitehall'.

U-turn after donations received

Hain is reported to have received (in 2007) '£10,000 from a union less than a month before making a surprise U-turn on job cuts. He backtracked on shutting dozens of Remploy factories after the GMB donated the money to his campaign'. The GMB deny attempting to influence him.

Motivated by self-advancement

In regards to Hain, The Daily Telegraph reports that there has been 'suspicion among many colleagues that he is willing to put personal gain ahead of either party loyalty or political principle'. The report continues by stating that 'critics on both Left and Right say he is motivated mainly by self-advancement'.

The Express describes him as a 'workaholic apparatchik' who is 'renowned for his ambition' and who has for 'almost a decade he has been obsessed with the idea of becoming Labour's deputy leader'.

The Guardian reminds us that 'Everyone at the top level in politics is highly ambitious. It's just that Hain is rubbish at hiding it'.