Scottish secretary claims that party colleagues 'all acted honestly'

No more high-profile Labour politicians will have to resign over the current donations row, Scottish secretary Des Browne has claimed.

Despite revelations that yet another candidate for the deputy Labour leadership had apparently wrongly accepted a donation of £3000, the Kilmarnock and Loudoun MP also does not expect any more of his colleagues to be reported to the police over the issue.

His prediction comes after Peter Hain quit the Cabinet last week after the Electoral Commission, investigating him over more than £100,000 of undeclared donations, passed his case to the police.

Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander is also facing an Electoral Commission probe after her campaign team accepted an illegal donation during her party leadership campaign.

Browne, who is also the defence secretary, will tell BBC Scotland's Politics show today in a pre-recorded interview that he doesn't expect any more resignations over the issue.

"I am not anticipating that anyone else will be reported to the police," he will say. "What I am saying to you is, the people who have been involved in this, in my view, have all acted honestly.

"These are all decent people. Peter Hain is a good man, very good politician, a valued colleague of mine.

"I am absolutely satisfied that he will be able to clear his name in relation to this, when he is given the space and time to do it, and that's why he's resigned from the government.

"I don't expect that any of the rest of my colleagues will need to resign from any positions that they are in."

Hain has always maintained that his undeclared donations were down to an innocent mistake.

A Jersey businessman, Paul Green, gave £950 to Alexander's campaign after an approach from her team, in what her supporters later conceded was a breach of the law requiring donations to be from UK-based voters or companies.

Labour colleague Jackie Baillie said she was "very confident" that Alexander would be cleared of any intentional wrongdoing and should not resign even if the commission ruled against her.

SNP MSP Roseanna Cunningham said: "Labour appears to be putting itself not just above the law but ahead of the law. Des Browne and the Labour Party must have an inside track to the Electoral Commission, otherwise his pronouncements may be premature.

"If Wendy Alexander and her campaign team are going to get away with what they admit was breaking the law, the Electoral Commission should be open about it."

However, Gordon Brown's donations nightmare deepened further last night as another of his Cabinet ministers was accused of accepting cash through a proxy.

Newspaper reports claimed that immigrant Waseem Siddiqui was used to channel more than £3000 to Alan Johnson's failed campaign to become deputy Labour leader. However, the 50-year-old said he did not know who the health secretary was, and his brother - a Labour official - had asked him to write a blank cheque. Siddiqui is said to be a Pakistani who has been living in Croydon, Surrey, on a student visa for the past three years. He claimed his brother Ahmed Yar Mohammed - the treasurer of Croydon Central Labour Party - asked him to write the cheque for £3334, then gave him the money.

A statement from Johnson's campaign denied any deliberate wrongdoing. "We had no reason to believe the donation came from anyone other than (Mr Siddiqui)," it said.

"We checked he was a member of the Labour Party and was on the electoral register and we registered the donation with the Labour Party, the register of members' interests and the Electoral Commission."