OXFAM

FURTHER horrifying details of the Oxfam scandal that are emerging raises many questions for the watchdogs who are responsible for seeing that our taxes and donations are properly spent.

The Charity Commission should be first in the dock. Why was it left to newspapers to expose this shocking affair, when the torpid regulator now admits it is receiving some 1,000 complaints of serious incidents – including sexual assault – a year? It is quite astonishing for a body charged with overseeing the proper regulation of the charity sector has been so somnolent.

Or next on the list, the Department for International Development, which shovels millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money into Oxfam. The number of staff in this scandal-ridden organisation on six-figure salaries has doubled since 2010. It seems inconceivable that ministers so desperate to offload the foreign aid budget – a staggering £13.3billion last year alone – could turn such a blind eye to reports of abuse.

It is noted that since orgies in Haiti were reported in the UK Press, past and present overseas aid secretaries have led the charge against the charity, with Priti Patel condemning its handling of the affair as “scandalous”, while the present International Development Secretary, Penny Mordaunt, threatens cuts in public spending.

But their stand would be more compelling if they had acted on past complaints of sexual abuse, instead of saving up their moral courage until now.

Next, is the charity bosses themselves: most are drawn from a cosy elite of quangocrats, who spend their lives moving from one handsomely paid public-sector job to another.

At the time of the Haiti scandal in 2010, Dame Barbara Stocking oversaw the running and was in charge of Oxfam. A former NHS director, she stands accused of allowing one of the charity’s worst offenders a “dignified exit”, fearing that sacking him would highlight allegations of child prostitution and harm Oxfam’s reputation.

Then there is the current chairman of Oxfam’s trustees, Caroline Thomson. The wife a Labour peer, she received an astounding £670,000 pay-off from the BBC – even though she flounced out (after her failure to secure the job of director-general).

How can anyone place confidence in such a chairman, steeped in the BBC’s lax public-sector mentality, to oversee the reform and overhaul Oxfam desperately needs? If the charity sector is to flourish it must surely cast its net wider than this politically correct elite.

And, is there any good reason why charities, enjoying vast public funding and tax reliefs, should be exempt from media Freedom of Information requests? Haven’t taxpayers every right to know how their money is spent (and misspent)?