Hain smear campaign emails fake

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The emails, purporting to have been sent by members of Mr Hain's campaign team, are understood to have been circulated following his resignation from the Cabinet in January.

The former Welsh Secretary resigned after police launched a probe into his failure to declare £103,000 in donations to his campaign.

The RSPCA said it had investigated the content of some of the emails, which suggest one of its employees in Wales was using its premises to campaign for Mr Hain, and found them to be "nonsense".

And Mr Hain said it was "preposterous" to imagine a charity's office would have been used in such a way.

The emails purported to have been sent from an email address which included the domain name @rspca.co.uk, but the domain name included in the charity's email addresses is @rspca.org.uk.

A spokesman for the charity said the emails were found to be fake for both this and other reasons.

"This appears to be a flimsy and frankly desperate attempt to smear an innocent person and drag the RSPCA into somebody else's dispute," the spokesman said.

"This has nothing to do with the RSPCA or our work, and it is extremely sad that anyone would try to use a charity's name to pursue their own personal agenda."

Mr Hain said: "I knew they must have been fabricated," he said. "That would never have happened and it would have been preposterous to imagine that it would have done. I have no idea who has done this. This business has been full of dirty tricks and lies and smears."