Trust in foreign aid is damaged says Mordaunt
BRITONS have become “sceptical” about the way foreign aid cash is spent, the International Development Secretary admitted yesterday.
Penny Mordaunt warned that Oxfam and other aid organisations had to rebuild public trust after the revelations of “grotesque” conduct, including aid workers paying for sex in disaster zones.
She also accused charities of putting concern for their reputations ahead of the need to put victims of poverty first.
Ms Mordaunt hit out at the “failings” in a speech to a conference for overseas aid organisations in London yesterday.
The British people had proved generous in donating cash in emergencies, the Tory Cabinet minister said.
“They believe in what we do – they are just sceptical about how we are going about doing that,” she said.
Her speech followed the suspension of Oxfam GB’s work in Haiti and the resignation of its deputy chief executive Penny Lawrence.
Charities including Save The Children and the Red Cross have also been hit by revelations of sexual misconduct.
“To deliver on the promises we’ve made to the world’s poorest, business as usual isn’t going to cut it,” she said.
“And to understand how we need to change we need to understand why we as a sector are falling short.”
Ms Mordaunt urged charity bosses to reflect on the way “sexual exploitation of the vulnerable” had been ignored.
“How did we get to this?” she asked. “It may have started with an attitude born of fundraising pressures, fierce competition for bids or guarding an organisation’s reputation to maximise its reach and offer. That attitude found a justification in the belief that reporting wrongdoing would do more harm than good.”
The aid sector had forgotten the need to serve the vulnerable and the “expectations of those who enable us to – the British people”, she added.
“To recover we must put the beneficiaries of aid first. We must live up to the values of our nation.” Ms Mordaunt’s speech follows the Daily Express’s Stop The Foreign Aid Madness Crusade against waste in the aid budget.
This month a petition backed by 100,000 readers called for part of the annual £13.4billion foreign aid budget to be redirected to the NHS and elderly social care.
PENNY MORDAUNT, the International Development Secretary, has rightly warned that in the aftermath of the scandals involving Oxfam and other charities the public has become “sceptical” about the way foreign aid cash is spent. Though the truth is that the public was sceptical before that as has been seen in the overwhelming support for our Stop The Foreign Aid Madness crusade.
But that said Ms Mordaunt is right to stress that: “To deliver on the promises we’ve made to the world’s poorest, business as usual isn’t going to cut it.”
In a strong speech she asked how the various charitable agencies have reached the point where sexual exploitation seems commonplace. Their arrogance and sense of entitlement is not only an insult to beneficiaries of aid, it is also an insult to decent British people who are only too willing to give generously when natural disasters or famine strike.