On Wednesday, the Times newspaper carried a story under the headline: Oxfam board must quit over staff vetting failures, says ex-trustee.

The article is reproduced below without comment. 

Errors have been disclosed in the charity’s safeguarding process after an overhaul of the charity was ordered following the Haiti sex abuse scandal.

Oxfam’s board should resign en masse and apologise for not fixing safeguarding failures in the wake of the Haiti scandal, a former trustee told The Times.

Dr Balwant Singh, who resigned from Oxfam’s board of trustees last week in protest at the removal of the chief executive, Halima Begum, called on the Charity Commission to send in a caretaker board to oversee the aid giant.

The Times revealed on Tuesday that the charity had come under scrutiny from the regulator after reporting serious errors in its staff vetting processes between 2023-25.

The disclosure was a blow to Oxfam, which was ordered to overhaul its recruitment and vetting after this newspaper reported in 2018 how the charity had covered up sexual abuse by aid workers in earthquake-stricken Haiti in 2010.
Singh said the recent vetting problem was “the latest governance failure to be exposed and, sadly, there may be more”.

He said: “The entire board should resign immediately. The incredible trust that the British people place in this beloved charity has yet again been shattered, and this board bears full responsibility. Any trustee who has an iota of integrity, who genuinely understands their governance responsibilities, should step down.

“If they refuse, then the Charity Commission should use its statutory powers to remove each trustee as a matter of urgency, and appoint a caretaker board to run Oxfam until public confidence can be restored.”

Singh confirmed he had written to and met officials from the regulator to discuss his concerns about the governance of Oxfam, which had an income of £339 million — including £106 million in legacies and donations — in 2024-25.

He resigned in the wake of the board’s removal of Begum as Oxfam’s chief executive after less than two years in office. Begum resigned after the board declared it had lost confidence in her. In a statement, the board said a review had identified “serious issues in the CEO’s leadership behaviour” including “inappropriate interference into safeguarding and integrity investigations”.

But Singh claimed that far from interfering in safeguarding inquiries, Begum had emphasised the seriousness of the vetting failures to the board.

He said: “Let’s be clear that, without her work and that of the safeguarding and HR teams, this problem would not have been exposed or resolved. The only reason that Oxfam is now vetting compliant is thanks to the work of Dr Begum and dedicated staff to resolve an entirely unacceptable governance failing that is the sole responsibility of the Oxfam board.”

The former trustee said Begum had inherited a significant financial deficit and incurred staff hostility when she had to make a large number of redundancies to address it. He claimed she had been “thrown under the bus”. The board had argued, however, there had been “an irretrievable breakdown in its trust and confidence in Dr Begum’s ability to discharge the role of chief executive”.

Oxfam said Singh had been a member of the board when it unanimously decided that “trust and confidence in the former chief executive officer had been lost”.

A spokesperson added: “It is bizarre and disappointing that a trustee who independently backed this unanimous decision is now publicly questioning a board resolution they were part of determining.”

The charity has commissioned a further review of “board processes” and said it had kept the regulator fully informed of the situation. The Charity Commission confirmed it had talked to Oxfam trustees and other people and was continuing to gather information.

Begum has instructed lawyers and is expected to lodge an employment tribunal claim which is likely to prove costly for the charity. Oxfam poached her from its partner charity ActionAid where she was chief executive for four months until March 2024.