Responsible but not accountable.. again..

Newsnight covered the Secretary of State for Wales etc Peter Hain’s current troubles on Thursday – video below – and the next day Hain made a statement to the Guardian blaming the number of hats he was wearing at the time for his forgetfulness over campaign donations, channelled through the non-think-tank Progressive Policies Forum, and said that “I just want to make it clear that when mistakes have occurred in the past I have never dumped on assistants or civil servants. I will not start doing so now. I take full responsibility.” The next day, Saturday, he made another statement – “I apologise for the embarrassment caused by poor administration and lack of early and clear disclosure” and he added that his Permanent Secretary was “satisified” there was “no conflict” with his Ministerial Code. The BBC’s Mark Saunders lists some more questions for Peter Hain and there’s a convenient time-line of events. Guido has even more, naturally, but despite Mick’s surpise one fact that suggests it might have been a case of Hain’s ego getting in the way is what this Channel 4 News report states – “It emerged that Hain had been late in declaring more than £103,000 – more than many of his rivals had spent on their entire campaigns.” He came fifth out of 6 candidates. But if Peter Hain is to be sacked persuaded to resign it should be because he’s been found to be in breach of his Ministerial Code. Of course, public money is currently being spent on his appeal against a High Court ruling that he did just that..

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.