I do feel sorry for Peter because it seems untenable that he will remain in his position for another week and the end of his ministerial career is probably only awaiting the Prime Minister's deliberations on the implications for a full-scale reshuffle. It's a shame for all of us to lose Peter's distinctive liberal influence in government.

However, the damage done to the Labour Party's standing by the fundraising arrangements of Peter Hain and Harriet Harman show that the Labour Party cannot leave the administration of high profile, internal elections to chance in future.

Having worked on the Benn deputy leadership campaign, I was surprised by the failure of the Labour Party to forsee many of the administrative issues that emerged, not just in terms of fundraising but also in terms of the acquisition and use of party and affiliate membership lists, which comes under Data Protection law.

The Party has an opportunity with internal elections to provide facilities for candidates for a fee, while ensuring compliance with data protection and elections/party funding laws.

1. The Party should set up an "Internal Elections" accounting unit under elections law and insist that relevant candidates report through that accounting unit rather than setting up a registrable donee unit.

2. The Party should check all donors independently of the candidate's teams.

3. The Party should provide to candidates a legally compliant online donations tool.

4. The Party should provide mailing opportunities for candidates to party members and to CLP secretaries. For example, over the course of a year, London Region could send ten mailings to members, bundling all internal elections mailings plus any regional or national party communications that are due, or cancelling the mailing entirely if there is no demand. In this manner, candidates get to send mailings to members without getting access to the membership lists and in doing so subsidise the mailing costs for regional and national postal communications with members. During a high profile election, these mailing opportunities could be weekly instead of monthly.

5. The Party should provide templating and print services to candidates for internal elections.

6. Instead of points 4 & 5, the Party could send to members (and affiliates?) a monthly newspaper effectively funded by advertisements from candidates for internal elections.

7. The Party should provide facilities for candidates to bulk email members, or similarly allow candidates to pay to have a meessage included in a section of a monthly email (without giving the email addresses to candidates).

8. The Party should provide a remote access facility for telephone canvassing / polling Party members and affiliates. Polling in particular could be a paid for service from the party's own call centre.

For NEC / NPF, regional board candidates, youth or other lowish-profile candidates, this would offer a range of paid-for facilities that would give those candidates a real opportunity to revitalise internal party democracy without jeopardising the Party's good name through abuses of elections or data protection law. Secondly, these facilities would give all candidates a level playing field to ensure no-one had privileged access to membership lists, which was the case with the Deputy and Leadership elections. Thirdly, candidates in this way would be subsidising the Labour Party's own national and regional communications with its own members and CLP officers, which has to be a good thing.

Do you think these facilities would be useful to candidates for internal election or excessively restrictive? Could you suggest more facilities candidates could usefully buy from the party?

Is allowing the current laissez faire system to continue really an option?