Aid Sector: Safeguarding

Richard Burden Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

This case is truly shocking and it may be that prosecutions result from what has gone on. We need to take stock of the sector, which is why I commissioned the review of what our partners are doing. It is also absolutely vital that we are very clear with any organisation we work with about what we expect from them. We often say “zero tolerance”, but we have to live that and mean that, and there have to be consequences when people breach the requirements we have of them. I said last week in Stockholm at the End Violence against Children conference that there is no organisation too big, or our work with them too complex, that we will not withhold funding from them if they do not meet those standards.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. She will know that this morning’s Select Committee meeting highlighted not only the really grotesque actions of a number of Oxfam staff in Haiti in 2011, but the fact that the whole sector has been far too slow to address the issue of sexual abuse and exploitation. Does she agree that at this stage three things are important: first, there has to be full accountability; secondly, action needs to be taken internationally, and an international register of humanitarian workers would help with that; and, thirdly, recognising the vital work the vast majority of aid workers do, nothing must be done to jeopardise UK aid to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world?

[Penny Mordaunt]

Yes, yes and yes.