Government Hypocrisy

It would appear that the law on political donations has been broken. The labour party has been in receipt of large donations that had been made through intermediaries rather than being declared as coming from the originating donor.

The Prime Minister is claiming no knowledge of such transactions and Harriet Harmen the deputy Labour Leader is claiming a donation of £5,000 made by an intermediary to her deputy leadership campaign had been received in “Good Faith” . This rather suggests that the government take the view that it is a reasonable excuse to be unaware or to fail establish the full facts about things.

This is news to me. I have personal experience of the fact that Ignorance is no defence from a motoring offence where I was absolutely confident everything was legal and above board. Only an eagle eyed lawyer would have known otherwise and I am not a lawyer. Even the police were confused by the issue but ultimately, the law is the law and ignorance of it is no defence. I was found to be guilty even though I had no knowledge that I was committing an offence.

This being the case how can Harriet Harmen and the Prime Minister excuse acceptance of what would appear to be illegal donations and attempt to justify their own actions and the actions of their staffs and attempt to wriggle out of responsibility.

If you have a staff working on your behalf then you are responsible for the actions of that staff. We have seen just last week, the head of the HMRC resigned following the loss of disks containing data that that department was responsible for protecting. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor as minister responsible for that department have attempted to distance themselves from that mistake. Without question they are responsible for ensuring the protection of British citizens information held by the government. They certainly bear some responsibility as the paymasters and controllers of that department. They can at least argue they were not responsible for the day to day running of the department even though they are in overall control of those departments.

When it comes to their own parties and even their own political campaigns they have no excuse whatsoever. The law is the law and they have a duty and responsibility to follow it and there can be no excuse from people who have easy access to lawyers to claim ignorance as a defence.

It would seem, now more than ever before, we have a government which expects it’s citizens to be punished for not following the letter of the law but feels justified in excusing it’s own mistakes and errors.

There is only one word to describe that. Hypocricy. This from Gordon Brown who claimed to have a clear new vision of honest and open government? Oh dear.