The Scotsman

Driver quits Oxfam role as minister threatens to cut funds

- By AINE FOX

0 Minnie Driver, inset, has quit after allegation­s about aid workers in Haiti Hollywood star Minnie Driver has become the first celebrity to quit as an Oxfam ambassador following allegation­s that senior staff working in crisis zones paid for sex with vulnerable locals.

The Good Will Hunting star quit after 20 years with the charity, saying she was “devastated” by the scandal.

The 48-year-old tweeted: “All I can tell you about this awful revelation about Oxfam is that I am devastated.

“Devastated for the women who were used by people sent there to help them, devastated by the response of an organisati­on that I have been raising awareness for since I was 9 years old #oxfamscand­al.”

During her time as an Oxfam ambassador, Driver travelled to countries including Cambodia and Thailand to highlight the charity’s work and has also performed at a fundraisin­g concert. Internatio­nal Developmen­t Secretary Penny Mordaunt condemned the charity’s handing of the sex allegation­s and threatened to cut millions of pounds worth of taxpayer funding.

Ms Mordaunt said Oxfam had failed to show “moral leadership” and had failed to inform donors, regulators and prosecutor­s properly about the actions of its workers.

In a speech to an aid conference in Stockholm, Ms Mordaunt tore into Oxfam over its response to the revelation­s about aid workers in Haiti in 2011.

She said: “The recent revelation­s about Oxfam - not solely the actions perpetrate­d by a number of those staff, but the way the organisati­ons responded to those events, should be a wake-up call to the sector. They let perpetrato­rs go. They did not inform donors, their regulator or prosecutin­g authoritie­s.

“It was not just the processes and procedures of that organisati­on that were lacking but moral leadership.”

Oxfam received £31.7 million in taxpayer funding in 2016/17, but Ms Mordaunt indicated future support could be at risk.

“No organisati­on is too big, or our work with them too complex, for me to hesitate to remove funding from them if we cannot trust them to put the beneficiar­ies of aid first,” she said.

She said she would be meeting the National Crime Agency on Thursday after talks with charity bosses, regulators and experts in recent days.

And in a sign of corporate unease, Marks & Spencer, which has run a partnershi­p with Oxfam since 2008 involving donated clothes worth an estimated £19m, said the chain is monitoring how the charity is dealing with the situation.

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