Senior Labour officials were voicing hostility to the way the law on political donations was being enforced around the time that David Abrahams began making secret payments to the party, The Times can disclose today.

Lord Triesman, who was general secretary when the donations began, attacked the Electoral Commission for the volume of regulations it issued.

Another general secretary, Matt Carter, branded the law on registering donations a “burden” and spoke only of taking “reasonable” steps to comply with the law.

The irritation with the commission and apparently relaxed attitude to meeting legal obligations may give a clue to the climate that allowed Mr Abrahams to make donations of more than £600,000 through intermediaries. It may explain why two middle-ranking Labour officials helped solicitors acting for Mr Abrahams to draw up agreements that allowed him to donate through middlemen – deals that appear to have convinced key figures wrongly that they were within the law.

The attitude of senior Labour officials has emerged from a study by The Times of annual reports by officers to the party. It also found a marked change of approach towards compliance with the law after the cash-for-honours scandal began.

Both Lord Triesman and Mr Carter have denied any knowledge of Mr Abrahams’s secret payments, but the next general secretary, Peter Watt, was forced out last week after admitting that he did.

Labour headquarters has imposed a news blackout on the affair, arguing that the police investigation prevents press officers from answering detailed queries. Claims yesterday that a Newcastle upon Tyne solicitor acting for Mr Abrahams made the arrangement for him to give through proxies with two officials were neither confirmed nor denied. But senior figures said that they gave a logical reason why some in the party might have felt that the arrangement was legal.

It is also being suggested that the officials allegedly involved were based in party headquarters but had links with the North East, which would explain the apparent tightness of the arrangement.

A snapshot of the frustration felt by party officials can be seen in the annual report in 2002, the year before Mr Abrahams began donating. Lord Triesman and Jimmy Elsby, a T&GWU union official and Labour’s treasurer, spoke of the “extraordinary complexities” of the law that Labour itself introduced and the difficulty of complying with the new regulations. But their real target was the Electoral Commission, the regulator set up to police political donations.

They wrote: “The volume of regulation introduced by the Electoral Commission associated with the Act has extended exponentially. It is difficult to meet the full range of new regulations with a professional financial staff working at national level.

“It is a serious burden for many volunteer treasurers and trustees at local level, yet all are expected to meet every detailed requirement or to face civil and potentially criminal proceedings.”

Mr Carter, who succeed Lord Triesman, returned to a similar theme in the party’s annual report for 2003, by which time Mr Abrahams’s proxy donations had begun.

In an extraordinary phrase, Mr Carter wrote: “I remain committed to ensuring that the party takes every reasonable step to meet its legal obligations under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (2000).”

His grudging reference to “every reasonable step” was preceded by what came close to an apology to officers of local Labour parties for the new reporting duties they faced.

He wrote: “The party recognises the burdens and responsibilities which are placed by the Act on the treasurers of constituency Labour parties and other accounting units of the party.”

This followed rows with the Electoral Commission, which criticised Labour for the late reporting of a series of donations in 2003.

About that time Labour brought in a new finance director, Stephen Uttley, who was seconded from the accountancy firm KPMG, and the following year created a new post of national compliance manager to deal with reporting rules for donations.

In his report for 2004, which was issued after Labour had taken out the secret loans at the centre of the cash-for-honours affair, Mr Carter noticably toned down such criticism of the Electoral Commission. He referred in passing to the scale of the task facing volunteer local party treasurers and to the seriousness with which Labour took the law on reporting donations. “Managing the party’s finances and ensuring we acted within the legal and financial obligations remained a key component of the party’s work.”

— Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, said that Wendy Alexander should step aside as the Scottish Labour leader pending the outcome of any police investigation. His words echo those of Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, who has said that Ms Alexander should think about stepping back from the job while working to clear her name.

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