Charity withdraws bids for taxpayer funding

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■ Twitter: @yorkshirepost SAVE THE Children is to suspend bidding for cash from the taxpayer in the wake of the aid worker sex scandal.

Chief executive Kevin Watkins said the charity has volunteered to withdraw temporarily from applying for funding from the Department for International Development (DfID).

Mr Watkins said the suspension would continue until the organisation can meet the “high standards” expected.

Oxfam’s DfID funding as also suspended after the charity was accused of covering up claims that staff used prostitutes while delivering aid to disaster-stricken Haiti in 2011.

It follows the launch of a Charity Commission inquiry into the handling of sexual harassment allegations against two senior Save the Children executives in 2012 and 2015.

Mr Watkins said the reporting of the incidents made his “stomach churn”. “I am heartbroken that we have to scale back our work in areas that we could be, with DfID, driving an agenda that would make a difference to some of the world’s poorest children,” he told the BBC.

“I am absolutely committed to building an organisational culture that protects and safeguards the extraordinary people who work across our organisation.

“They have a right to be protected. I find what happened abhorrent and unacceptable.”

In a letter to International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt, Mr Watkins said: “While I greatly regret both the circumstances that have brought us to this juncture and the consequences for children, I fully recognise our responsibility to meet the high standards that you rightly expect.

“I want to underscore how seriously we take the sexual harassment cases reported at our headquarters in 2012 and 2015. We are co-operating fully with the Charity Commission’s inquiry to ensure that a complete and truthful account of these cases emerges.”

It comes a week after Save the Children’s international chairman Sir Alan Parker quit his role. The charity apologised earlier this year to women employees who complained of inappropriate behaviour by former chief executive Justin Forsyth.

A leaked 2015 report suggested that Sir Alan’s “very close” relationship with Mr Forsyth, who left the charity in 2016, may have affected how he responded to complaints.

Brendan Cox, the widower of murdered MP Jo Cox, also admitted that he had made “mistakes” and behaved in a way that caused some women “hurt and offence” when he was working at Save the Children.