When things go wrong in organisations or at events, the way in which this Government responds seems to depend on who is at fault. When Jacob Rees-Mogg attended a meeting at the University of the West of England on 2nd February and some demonstrators turned up and got aggressive, the Tories decided to laud Jacob for his approach and then turned the event into a campaign for freedom of speech, claiming that the mob were trying to stop Jacob from speaking freely, even though he is clearly capable of being heard on numerous forms of media at a moments notice. Yet when a young Conservative meeting turned into a fight on Thursday at the Walkers of Whitehall pub there is no indication that the same PR people are willing to explain what has happened, primarily because the two sides of the fight were both factions within the young conservatives.

In the case of Oxfam we now know that the Tories are denying this charity any future funding until they are confident that there are suitable safeguards and protection in place. This news report quotes Penny Mordaunt: “The UK Government reserves the right to take whatever decisions about present or future funding to Oxfam, and any other organisation, that we deem necessary. We have been very clear that we will not work with any organisation that does not live up to the high standards on safeguarding and protection that we require.” It seems hard to argue against such an approach if we take those words at face value until one comes across this news report from 2015  which made it clear that there is one rule for Oxfam and an entirely different one for G4S and Serco. ‘The Ministry of Justice is still paying security firms G4S and Serco millions of pounds every month for supplying electronic tagging equipment, more than a year after both companies were barred from running the contract. Both companies faced criminal investigations by the Serious Fraud Office over allegations of overcharging that led to them repaying nearly £180m.’

It seems vital that our Government acts in a manner that is even handed and without any sense of preference. We know that there are many Tories who Champion companies such as G4S, Serco and Capita and that also favoured Carillion. By the same token we know that there are many who oppose the spending of public money on Foreign Aid. However the need to carry out policy is vital for any Government and if they are willing to be robust in the case of charities that get things wrong, they need to do the same with big businesses.