Amid stiff competition, Oxfam may be the British charity sector’s greatest hypocrite. The charity’s chief executive, Halima Begum, has been forced out by trustees over accusations of bullying. Since being appointed almost two years ago, Begum is alleged to have presided over a ‘culture of fear’ that prompted almost 70 members of staff to sign a letter calling on the board to investigate her.
Begum – who earns over £130,000 a year – also stands accused of compromising Oxfam’s impartiality after appearing on stage with a Palestinian journalist who described the 7 October massacre as a ‘great day’. Naturally, Begum denies everything. Who’d have expected such conduct from the ‘be kind’ brigade?
Of course, this isn’t the first scandal to hit Oxfam. It emerged in 2018 that the charity had covered up widespread sexual abuse by its staff. While working in Haiti following the earthquake in 2010, Oxfam staff, including Roland Van Hauwermeiren – the director of operations at the time – were found to have used prostitutes in a villa rented for them by the organisation. The Charity Commission ultimately opened a statutory inquiry into Oxfam, found that the charity may not have fully disclosed everything it knew about the claims of sexual misconduct and gave it an official warning.
The charity was barred from bidding for government funding as a result. The ban was briefly lifted, only to be reinstated in 2021 after yet more claims of sexual impropriety and bullying, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After Oxfam made ‘significant improvements’ to its safeguarding regime, the government officially removed the ban in November 2022.
It may be this unfortunate history that explains why individual donations make up less than half of Oxfam’s revenue. But it could also be the fact Oxfam seems to increasingly see perpetuating tired myths about capitalism and peddling dodgy statistics as central to its work.
Look at its annual report on economic inequality, timed to coincide with the meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos. This year’s edition, ‘Takers not Makers: The unjust poverty and unearned wealth of colonialism’, claims that between 1795 and 1900 the British extracted $64.82 trillion from India, or around £48 trillion. As the historian Robert Tombs has pointed out, if you probe that claim, it is almost completely insubstantial. In the methodology note attached to the report (which in fact contains few actual details on methodology), it simply cites the work of two Indian Marxists whose work has been widely questioned.
You’ll be unsurprised to learn that what Oxfam proposes to address the inequality that has arisen from ‘colonialism’ and later, ‘neoliberalism’, is a wealth tax. In a petition that you can sign here, the charity protests the Prime Minister’s plan to cut the foreign aid budget from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of national income by 2027. Rather, ‘Kier Starmer’ (that’s how they’ve spelt his name) should impose an extra 2 per cent tax on individuals worth £10 million or more, which would apparently raise £24 billion annually.
Let me offer a small piece of advice
This, of course, is hokum, but as the rise of Zack Polanski exhibits, it is a dangerously fashionable idea. The truth about wealth taxes is that not only do they not work, they actually make everyone poorer as a result. The French proved this with their own attempt at wealth taxation, which raised just €3.5 billion a year, but cost €7 billion a year in lost tax revenue due to capital flight. In an age when capital is more mobile than ever – Britain has already seen its fair share of millionaires leave to escape Labour’s economic class war – a wealth tax will simply drive out what wealth and innovation we have left.
Whoever the lucky candidate may be, Oxfam’s next CEO has quite the challenge ahead of them. Let me offer them a small piece of advice: start restoring the charity’s credibility by focusing on its founding mission, rather than latching on to the latest left-wing fad.
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