Scandal prompts further calls to slash foreign aid
THE Oxfam sex abuse scandal has sparked fresh concern at the way billions of pounds of British taxpayers’ cash is spent overseas every year.
Its staff are said to have hired prostitutes while delivering aid to Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake in 2010, calling into question the oversight given to how taxpayers’ cash is used.
The charity received £31.7million from the UK last year but future financial support from the state has been put in doubt because of the scandal.
A senior Tory MP said the Department for International Development lacked “moral leadership” after it emerged Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt had not sought chief executive Mark Goldring’s resignation.
The scandal has seen support grow for a petition on the Government website calling for an end to a lavish
commitment which requires Britain to spend at least 0.7 per cent of national income overseas each year.
Nearly 50,000 people have already lent their support and if a similar number sign it by March 14 a call to reconsider the legally binding target will be debated in Parliament.
The prostitution scandal engulfing Oxfam comes a week after Tory MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Philip Davies joined this newspaper to hand over a separate petition on behalf of 100,000 readers calling on Prime Minister Theresa May to Stop The Foreign Aid Madness.
Tory MP David Davies said: “If I was the Government I would stop Oxfam’s funding immediately because it is not fit for purpose. For far too long Oxfam has been less interested in people who are starving and much more interested in promoting an anticapitalist agenda. Capitalism might not be perfect but it has done more to raise standards of living across the Third World than the socialist ideology Oxfam is promoting.”
James Price, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It was great to see that the Express has support from both MPs and its readers to bring some measure of sanity back to the foreign aid budget. Hopefully Number 10 will realise how strongly people feel about their money being wasted because of a stupid and damaging spending target. I hope the Express keeps holding politicians to account for the ways they waste taxpayers’ money.”
Four members of Oxfam staff were dismissed and three, including the country director Roland van Hauwermeiren, resigned before the end of the 2011 investigation.
To sign the petition visit https://petition.parliament.uk/ petitions/200292