The two central figures in the Kids Company fiasco, Camila Batmanghelidjh and Alan Yentob, have been grilled by the Public Administration Committee this morning and it’s gone very badly for both. As you might expect, Batmanghelidjh shirked all responsibility for the collapse of the charity she founded – outrageously blaming civil servants who blew the whistle on her. Yentob, the charity’s chairman, angrily denied any conflict with his role as the BBC’s Creative Director. It didn’t quite get into ‘you can’t handle the truth!’ territory — instead it was ‘please, think of the children’ which is arguably worse. If either of them had done that sufficiently, the charity would not have collapsed.
Batmanghelidjh’s shirking of responsibility was frustrating for the committee members. When she asked the chair Bernard Jenkin, ‘on what basis do you describe this as a failing charity?’, he flatly responded ‘because it’s gone bust’.
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