The donors’ verdict: Now 7,000 stop giving to crisis -hit Oxfam

‘A complete betrayal of trust’ ‘The aid sector was pretty rotten’

OXFAM was publicly shamed yesterday as bosses revealed 26 new sex abuse claims against its staff and admitted 7,000 people had cancelled their monthly donations.

Chief executive Mark Goldring disclosed the figures as he delivered a grovelling apology for the scandal – triggered by revelations its aid workers used prostitutes in earthquake-hit Haiti – which has sparked a global furore and left the charity’s reputation in tatters.

Appearing before MPs, Mr Goldring said that of the 26 misconduct claims, 16 stemmed from abroad, seven took place in Oxfam’s high street shops and another three took place in its headquarters or regional offices. Some of the claims were ‘very serious’, he told MPs.

Mr Goldring also apologised for apparently attempting to downplay the seriousness of the scandal in an interview last week. On another humiliating day for the charity: MPs heard claims that whistleblowers at Oxfam had been victimised;

Civil servants said the scandal has reduced trust in the Government’s pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of Britain’s income on aid;

Ministers demanded a global database of aid workers to root out abusers;

The United Nations was warned that Britain could pull funding unless it gets a grip on its own sex abuse problems.

Last night the International Development Secretary named two senior Oxfam figures she believes may have deliberately ‘misled’ the authorities about the Haiti affair.

Penny Mordaunt said the charity ‘failed’ under the watch of Dame Barbara Stocking, a former chief executive, and Penny Lawrence, the deputy chief executive who resigned over the scandal last week.

In a statement to the Commons, Miss Mordaunt accused the executives of not reporting and following up incidents of wrongdoing, suggesting they were more interested in Oxfam’s reputation than the vulnerable people they were supposed to help.

‘In such circumstances we must be able to trust organisations not only to do all they can to prevent harm, but to report and follow up incidents of wrongdoing when they occur,’ she said. ‘In this duty Oxfam failed under the watch of Barbara Stocking and Penny Lawrence.

‘In my view they misled, quite possibly deliberately. I believe their motivation appears to be the protection of their organisation’s reputation. They put that before those they were there to help and protect – a complete betrayal of trust.’

Dame Barbara was chief executive of Oxfam between 2001 and 2013 – covering the time when the Haiti abuse was occurring after the devastating earthquake in 2010.

Mr Goldring was forced into his humiliating apology during a hastily convened meeting of the Commons international development committee. He said sorry for comments which appeared to play down the seriousness of the scandal, when he told a newspaper the charity was being attacked as if it had ‘murdered babies in their cots’.

Committee chairman Stephen Twigg said the parallel was regarded by many people as ‘grossly inappropriate’. ‘I do apologise,’ Mr Goldring said. ‘I was under stress, I’d given many interviews, I’d made many decisions to try to lead Oxfam’s response to this.’

Asked about comments that he had not slept for six days, Mr Goldring said: ‘I shouldn’t have put my own sleep, or lack of it, in the public domain. I hope I have led Oxfam competently, but that’s for others to decide.’

Mr Goldring told the committee that Oxfam made the wrong call at the time of the original investigation into events in Haiti when it issued a press release which did not go into details about the fact that sexual exploitation was involved. He said one of those who resigned or was sacked as a result of abuse in Haiti was later reemployed by an Oxfam organisation elsewhere in the world.

Mr Goldring revealed that when another aid charity later enquired about whether it should offer a job to ex-Haiti chief Roland van Hauwermeiren, who was forced to resign as a result of the scandal, it declined to offer a reference but merely listed his positions at Oxfam.

The chief executive also admit- ted his charity should have reported cases to the Haitian authorities and that it did not give the Department for International Development enough details.

Oxfam International’s executive director, Winnie Byanyima, told the committee: ‘Some hideous men came into our organisation and abused the trust of the British people, the supporters. But they were able to get away, to get a recommendation to leave. This was wrong.’

Tory MP Pauline Latham told Mr Goldring that she had heard allegations of aid workers abusing women years ago while at an international conference. She said: ‘Everybody knew this happened, everybody knew that the aid sector was pretty rotten, because it had got all these people who were abusing women and girls regularly in all countries.

‘But nobody, not one organisation, was actually tackling it and doing a thing about it. That’s shocking. You are all supposed to be good people trying to help the world, but it would appear you are not as good as you should be.’

She added: ‘What is wrong with this minority of men that they can’t keep their trousers done up and they have to go for very, very vulnerable people in the most vulnerable situations in the world? No wonder the world is angry. No wonder people are questioning whether money should be given to charities.’

Oxfam International. Less shrewd than Thomson, she kept trying to contribute, not least to remind us that she was from Uganda. Winnie the human shield. MPs were little interested in her contributions. ‘Can I just say…?’ she would begin. ‘Noooo!’ cried the MPs. Goldring was the one they wanted to interrogate.

Oxfam’s response to the crisis was a classic of the elite. It was, basically, ‘make us more technocratic’. Mr Goldring wanted aid workers to become minted as a ‘profession’ – ie on the same level as doctors or engineers. Anyone working in foreign aid should have a ‘humanitarian passport’ which would only be granted to those who had complied to official standards of behaviour monitored by Parliament.

Such is the evaporation of our moral self- sufficiency. Oxfam workers are now being given a ‘code of conduct’ which bars them from visiting prostitutes (when abroad).

Do we really need a code of conduct to tell us bedding a harlot is wrong?

The committee was told that in future Oxfam would spend more millions of pounds on ‘safeguarding’ (i.e. on managerial systems that codify sackable offences and ringfence executive blame). La Thomson put on a pair of tortoiseshell half-moon spectacles to aver that ‘secrecy is anathema to trust’. Coming from such a veteran of the BBC politburo, that made me bark with laughter.

Elsewhere, the Culture select committee was scrutinising Lady Stowell, proposed new chairman of the Charity Commission. MPs focused on her lack of experience running charities. Not a long-standing charities schmoozer? Tut tut.

But hang on. Might Lady Stowell’s lack of past involvement with this careerist ‘ Third Sector’ not be an advantage? Might she not look at charities with the eye of a member of the public, rather than one of the gang?

A restoration of amateurs might be what we need.