Good evening. It was in October 1942 the darkest days of the war

that a professor of Greek, a retired colonial officer and an Anglican priest, amongst others,

met in St Mary the Virgin Church, Oxford, to form the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, Oxfam.

Those founders wanted a low profile. The minutes of the meeting, recorded in an old school exercise book, noted,

several speakers urged

caution, lest controversy be aroused. Oxfam grew into a giant of the burgeoning aid industry,

courting controversy. Its latest annual report congratulates itself for what it describes as

very loud public advocacy, scolding global capitalism for the poverty and inequality in the world,

taking on issues that keep people poor, they call it, left-wing agitprop according to their critics.

Either way, a showy pitch staked out on the moral high ground, which made the revelations that

its aid workers had used people they were sent to help for sex, particularly damaging.

And not just Oxfam. Right across the aid world, yesterday's saints seem to have become today's

sinners. A scandal that comes at a time when wider and arguably more important questions

are being asked about the effectiveness and moral value of aid itself, not humanitarian relief

after disaster, but longer-term

development aid, which accounts for much of the effort and most of the money. Critics say it perpetuates

poverty, creates dependence, insulates bad governments from the consequences of their corruption.

They point to Africa where the World Bank says there are 60 million more people in extreme poverty

than the word two decades ago, despite a trillion dollars in aid.

And compare it to East Asia, where extreme poverty has been reduced from 81% to 4%,

not by aid, but they say by the very global capitalism that Oxfam decries.

The aid agencies say this is simplistic and selfish,

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