“Why is nobody doing anything about this?” has been my recurring lament.

The answer is contained in yesterday’s admirably trenchant review of the Electoral Commission by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Nobody was doing anything about this because the commission was timid, terrified of criticism and badly led. It was guilty of “regulatory failure”, says the review.

The same weakness was displayed over loans for peerages. It took The Times to expose the loans in the first place, back in April 2005. The commission did nothing about them, apart from announcing a review to take place after the election. “In fact,” says yesterday’s report, “the Electoral Commission does not appear to have taken any further action on this issue until it became a major controversy in 2006.” In a devastating sentence, the committee says it “particularly noted the reluctance of the Electoral Commission to commit itself firmly on any given subject under its regulatory responsibilities”.

What were the commissioners afraid of? Severed horses’ heads at the end of their beds? No, it is much worse than that. Last October, Sam Younger, the commission’s chairman, admitted that he did not intervene in the loans controversy because he feared “we might well be criticised”. Well, he has been soundly criticised now for inaction, and it deserves to be more damaging to his reputation than any action he might have taken to stem bad behaviour in British politics.

The commission was set up, among other aims, to ensure free and fair elections and to monitor the political parties’ funding and expenditure. And what has happened since? Public confidence in the freedom and fairness of elections has plummeted as widespread postal voting has led to hundreds of case of detected fraud, and doubtless thousands more that have not been spotted. Public confidence in the probity of funding for political parties has reached a new low too after the loans-for-peerages scandal.

So it is all the more extraordinary that Mr Younger’s appointment as chairman of the commission has just been extended for another two years. (I don’t know how he dares to turn up at work after a report like that.) Meanwhile, Sir Alistair Graham’s appointment as chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life is apparently unlikely to be extended when it expires in April. I know which man I would prefer to see holding politicians to account. And it is not Mr Younger.

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