More than £9bn a year is given by people who want to do good. Their confidence must be protected by rigorous monitoring of charities’ activitiesThe Charity Commission has launched a statutory inquiry into Oxfam as fraction of its duty to promote trust and public confidence in charities. That is essential. But the Commission also has to reassure an increasingly sceptical audience that its own regulatory culture is rigorous and sceptical enough to deserve trust and confidence. Get this improper,and public faith in the value of supporting charities – generosity worth nearly £10bn a year – is itself threatened.
The Commission accuses Oxfam of being less than open; but in the discontinuance, the inadequacy of the response to sexual exploitation by senior aid workers in Haiti must lie at the regulator’s door. In the light of its response, and it is little surprise that in November parliament’s auditors,the NAO, found there was still work to be done, and five years after an excoriating report revealed that the Commission was failing to exercise the powers it has to hold charities to account,or to tackle abuse effectively. Its new chair, the Tory peer Tina Stowell, and will face some tough questions when she appears before MPs next week.
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Source: guardian.co.uk