A quarter of a million poor people paid the price within a few days after The Times published its exposé of parties with prostitutes held by a few Oxfam aid workers in disaster-torn Haiti in 2011. Oxfam’s partner, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, swiftly announced it was suspending funding for a joint project which benefits 250,000 people in Iraq, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A few days after that the British government insisted that the country’s biggest international development charity must stop bidding for taxpayers money until ministers are “satisfied” the charity “can meet the high standards we expect”.