Investigation's punitive tack is out of proportion

Published on Sunday 3 February 2008 20:01

ANOTHER week, yet another bout of Sturm und Drang over the affair of Wendy Alexander and donations to her Labour leadership campaign. Those unversed in the ways of Scottish politics will struggle to comprehend how an overseas donation of £950 to an uncontested election could come to dominate for so long, still less have the capacity to end the career of one of Scotland's most talented and promising politicians.

Two developments have threatened to terminate this promise. The first is the acceptance by Ms Alexander's election team of a donation from a person domiciled overseas. The acceptance of such donations is proscribed under legislation ironically brought in by the Labour government at Westminster. The matter is now under prolonged and ongoing investigation by the Electoral Commission.

The second, arguably easier to deal with, is the referral of Ms Alexander by the Scottish parliamentary standards commissioner Dr Jim Dyer to the procurator-fiscal for not recording gifts to her leadership campaign. Is this justified? Ms Alexander received written guidance from parliamentary officials at the time that such donations need not be declared. The parliamentary commissioner has since ruled, after taking advice from a QC, that the donations should be treated as gifts and thus had to be declared. Ms Alexander made a voluntary declaration of the amounts received, and from whom, as soon as the watchdog's new ruling was made public.

This is a mess, and one that smacks of the rules being made up on the hoof and changed in the heat of political clamour – exactly how law should not be made. Ms Alexander complied with the rules as she was led to believe they stood at the time, and so cannot fairly be accused under retrospective rulings. If this is how law is to be applied, there is not a single person in public life who is safe from prosecution.

As to the substantive matter of the donation from outside the UK, Ms Alexander has pleaded that she had no knowledge of the source of this donation and had not intended to break the law. From what we know of her character and background, it would be surprising if she was not speaking the truth. But this is a matter of law and fact. The commission has to determine the facts of the matter and act on the basis of them.

That it has taken so long in this determination might suggest that the facts are not as clear cut as the public understands them, or that the commission is concerned that matters of degree and mitigation need to be weighed in a ruling that otherwise would destroy Ms Alexander's career. Such has been the effect of delay in prolonging the attacks on her – much of them ad feminem – that there now seems no middle way between innocence and being thrown to the jackals.

Justice must be fair. But if the law is not able to consider proportionality – to censure but not destroy – it will come to savage the hands of those who feed it.