The Committee on Standards in Public Life — set up in 1994 after the cash-for-questions saga and other scandals — may seem like a cautious Establishment institution. The Review of the Electoral Commission that it published yesterday is, however, a devastating document both in its conclusions and tone. It is an indictment of the organisation that is responsible for overseeing the funding and spending of political parties and the administration of election law. The committee pulls no punches in its assessment that public confidence in politics has been undermined by the “loans for lords” affair and the fraud that occurred as a result of the liberalisation of postal voting. While it does not and should not hold the Electoral Commission responsible for the whole of this malaise, the strong implication is one of unnecessary contributory negligence.

On party donations (direct and indirect), the verdict offered is scathing. The Electoral Commission has been “lacking the leadership, knowledge and courage to enforce its regulatory duties in relation to political party funding and campaign expenditure”. The committee notes that the first reference to political parties exploiting the loans loophole occurred in this newspaper in the midst of the last general election campaign but, despite prompting from concerned experts, the com- mission made no attempt to define what it deemed a genuine “commercial” loan to be.

An unduly deferential attitude was taken towards parties which, inevitably, once given the opportunity, played fast and loose. Indeed, Sam Younger, the commission chairman, admitted: “Our approach has always been that these are voluntary associations that ought, insofar as is compatible with the rules, to be left to get on with it and not have an organisation crawling over them all of the time.”

The political parties surely got on with it. Dubious loans are not the only example. The failure of the commission to act once the Liberal Democrats had accepted and spent £2.4 million from Michael Brown, a donor of whom little was known until his background was explored by The Times and who is now in prison for financial misdemeanours, sums up an institutional attitude that has been less watchdog than lapdog.

Ministers, rather than the commission, were to blame for introducing “postal votes on demand” in the last Parliament, an innovation which, as this newspaper again illustrated in a series of revelations, created the potential for “fraud on demand” in its wake. A robust organisation might, nevertheless, have been more effective in pressing the case that voters should be put on the electoral register individually, not by household, and that electors should be asked to produce personal identification at polling stations. A more focused body might also do more about an electoral register that, by the commission’s admission, excludes 3.5 million valid citizens and, according to credible research, contains four million errors on it. Much more needs to be done here and pursued with real vigour.

The committee has set out a plan about how the Electoral Commission could and should be overhauled. This would demand “leadership, a change in culture and staff with the necessary specialist skills to perform this role”. It is far from obvious that any of this will take place without a new chairman and chief executive.