Safeguarding in the Aid Sector

Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Patten

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord and will certainly convey to the Secretary of State his remarks about her handling of the crisis thus far. I also recognise his deep experience of leadership in this field. He asked a very specific question about what we knew when. I should say that the chairman of the IDC in the other place has confirmed that the committee is commencing an inquiry into this, and we will be co-operating fully.

The Charity Commission is also going to undertake an inquiry into this. The elements of who knew what and when are very important issues, but they will be addressed at that time. At the moment, all we would say is that, although DfID was informed that the investigation had concluded on 5 September 2011 and that all members who had been found not to have followed Oxfam’s code of conduct had left the organisation, its letter states that no allegations involved beneficiaries or the misuse of DfID funds. That was the reason for the very strong line that the Secretary of State used in her Statement in the other place about how DfID was potentially misled in this respect. Again, that will be something on which there will be full disclosure and transparency so we understand what happened and when. We will be co-operating with the Charity Commission and the IDC on those inquiries.

[Lord Patten (Con)]

My Lords, I have a family interest to declare inasmuch as my daughter has worked for the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development for the past 10 years. That is not a material interest, but it is one I should properly declare. Does my noble friend share my view that there may be very inadequate ethical training in many of our charities? Ethical training is not a central part of their DNA, particularly in the larger and more bureaucratic charities. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, that cultural change is desperately needed, particularly in some of our larger charities. Bringing about cultural change takes a very long time. It takes years and it needs ethical training of the highest level. That is something which many charities need to turn their attention to urgently.

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is absolutely right on this. There is a core problem which we have seen across different organisations. We have had to wrestle with these issues in recent years: the fear of asking the difficult probing questions when they are needed or the failure to be transparent about what has happened. Organisations are doing that—one does not like to say “for understandable reasons”—because they want to protect the reputation of the organisation. If anyone wants to know whether that works, ask Oxfam today when its reputation has been so tarnished and damaged by the failure to take that kind of prompt action and to ask the most difficult and searching questions in these areas at the right time.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Patten

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is right, and I am sorry if I have not been very clear on this. The key point was that the stylistic terms “grey list” and “blacklist”, which may be for general convenience, were not reflected in what we were saying—rather, it is a demonstration of commitments by the 30 jurisdictions named to address the concerns of the EU Code of Conduct Group. So we are more discussing the semantics of the terms that might be used to describe a jurisdiction which is complying or not complying, or progressing or not progressing, towards addressing concerns of the Code of Conduct Group.

[Lord Patten]

It is extremely important that we have the terminology right. If I have got it wrong, I apologise to the territories involved. I think—I ask my noble friend to reflect on this—that it is perfectly daft to put a British Overseas Territory such as Bermuda on a list of whatever shade of grey, because I believe that it is a very upright outfit and a suitable, well-run territory for financial services, and I do not believe that it is involved in money laundering. But it has been fingered in reports, and Commissioner Moscovici said yesterday that it was on some sort of grey list. We need a certain amount of clarity, because it is damaging to those people who do business with Bermuda. So I agree with my noble friend.

[Lord Bates]

That is a good point.