Summary
Alan Yentob and Camila Batmanghelidjh’s three-hour grilling by MPs is now over. What have we learned from the answers by chairman and chief executive of the defunct charity?
- Both strongly denied allegations of sexual abuse that emerged over the summer, and claim this was the real reason for Kids Company’s implosion and not the financial problems it was facing.
- Thousands of cases that Kids Company claimed to have on its books have not been handed over to local authorities, with Batmanghelidjh saying this was because of restrictions on the kinds of cases they would accept. The charity’s records claimed to have 36,000 clients, but only 1,069 were handed over.
- Batmanghelidjh was accused by one MP of providing a “torrent of verbal ectoplasm” in her answer to a question.
- Yentob denied accusations of a conflict of interest between his role as a senior BBC executive and chairman of Kids Company when the corporation’s journalists began investigating the charity.
- Kids Company had deficits in its “free reserve” in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2011 - that’s aside from the situation in 2014. Yentob countered that this figure did not take into account assets like properties.
- Batmanghelidjh appeared to repeat her accusation that some civil servants had briefed against Kids Company, although both she and Yentob denied having suspicions that the Cabinet Office was the source of the sex abuse allegation.
Batmanghelidjh 'We couldn't shrink the org. because of the caseload we were carrying' #kidscompany
— Guardian Voluntary (@GdnVoluntary) October 15, 2015
Yentob says: “Emotional attachment is one thing, I think you should credit me with a bit of competence as well.”
He adds: “Over 20 years the numbers of children whose lives we changed, sent to university, transformed their lives. I don’t regret that, I just regret that we handed responded earlier to the challenges and had a realisation that it couldn’t have carried on.”
David Jones asks Yentob: “Did your emotional attachment to the organisation blind you to the fact that you shouldn’t have been chairing it?”
Yentob makes clear he doesn’t believe the sex abuse allegations came from the Cabinet Office.
Batmanghelidjh says: “Some civil servants have been absolutely brilliant they’ve been extraordinary people with huge commitment. Some civil servants have been absolutely malicious and unprofessional and have behaved in ways that isn’t respectful of a democracy.”
She suggests some civil servants briefed against Kids Company, although insists these were not the source of sexual misconduct.
However, she adds: “I do think it’s very suspicious for the timing at which out grant arrives in our account and these allegations arrive only our finance person and the cabinet office knew that the money had hit our account. [...]
“Within hours it was all over the BBC and news outlets that these allegations related to sexual abuse and Kids Company. That was the kiss of death for a charity that deals with children.”
Allegations of sexual misconduct came from a malicious source, says Yentob.
Updated
The Guardian Voluntary Sector’s Twitter feed is also doing some sterling work live tweeting the hearing. You can see it here.
.@CommonsPACAC The cabinet office took your flat as surety for money?' Batmanghelidjh 'Yes' #kidscompany
— Guardian Voluntary (@GdnVoluntary) October 15, 2015
Batmanghelidjh: 'In 19 years we didn't receive a single penny from local government' #kidscompany
— Guardian Voluntary (@GdnVoluntary) October 15, 2015
Were Kids Company funds used to pay someone’s mortgage? Batmanghelidjh looks uncomfortable at this question.
“We couldn’t abandon the children and young people in our care who were being failed by other agencies,” she says.
Batmanghelidjh describes a particular case where a child rejected by mental health services was passed to her charity. She says she lobbied a number of figures in government to take this “extremely troubled” child back on but without success.
MPs ask her to provide more details. Cheryl Gillan is particularly insistent on the question of whether this individual’s local MP was informed of the case, but Batmanghelidjh can’t say whether the MP was.
Yentob repeats his earlier assertion that it was difficult to build up reserves because of the nature of the funding given. “With restricted funding people don’t want you to just put the funding in the bank,” he says.
He says at that stage the charity looked at putting reserves in property. These will now have to be looked at by the receivers disposing of Kids Company’s assets, he adds.
“I don’t know that shouting is going to get me to behave any better,” Batmanghelidjh snipes at Jenkin after a particularly emphatic call to order.
Bernard Jenkin points out that Kids Company had deficits in its “free reserve” in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2011 - that’s aside from the situation in 2014.
The fragility of the funding was due to the demand from children, Yentob insists. He adds that aside from “free reserves” the charity had assets it could call on to service debts.
David Jones is interrogating Yentob over his role as chairman, and his concerns about inadequate reserves. Yentob insists the problem of reserves only came up later.
Jones said: “If this was a business isn’t it your duty as chairman of the board of trustees that you have adequate resources?”
Yentob replied: “Until 2014 there were no questions about the financial resilience of Kids Company.”
The MP says Yentob failed to make “difficult decisions” over which children to prioritise care for.
Did Yentob influence a BBC interview with Batmanghelidjh? That appears to be the suggestion from Bernard Jenkins as he questions the BBC executive about where he stood as it took place.
Jenkins describes the scene as “such a senior and interested figure at the BBC [standing] beside the producer so the producer knows that what he says to the interviewer will be heard.”
Yentob is now answering questions about potential conflicts between his role as chairman of Kids Company and as a senior executive in the BBC, which broke some of the stories that surrounded the charity’s downfall this summer. Answering the issue, he said:
My concerns are all to do with the same ones as you which is the future of these children. The issue of the BBC and my life at the BBC is entirely separate to this.
Twitter is still going wild for Batmanghelidjh and Yentob’s select committee performance. Save for the obvious jokes about the former Kids Company chief executive’s name, here are some of the best:
#kidscompany an excellent proof that compassion and good intentions are worthless without competence.
— Adam Casey (@geekethics) October 15, 2015
Camilla's office. #kidscompany Lavish might be a word that describes this scene. pic.twitter.com/3jmRqtROVm
— Philip Marks (@philnmarks) October 15, 2015
This is the best television Alan Yentob has done for years... #kidscompany
— James Tyrrell (@JRTyrrell) October 15, 2015
"@SamiraAhmedUK: "I think lack of funding was the problem." Camilla B #kidscompany" The definition of Chutzpah. Adding insult to injury.
— Mira Bar-Hillel (@mirabarhillel) October 15, 2015
Batmanghelidjh: “On what basis do you describe this as a failing charity?”
Jenkin: “Because it’s gone bust.”
Updated
Bernard Jenkin turns up the heat. He asks:
Are you seriously saying to us, Mr Yentob, that you as chairman and the other trustees have no responsibility for the failure of this charity?
Flynn, a former investor, is questioning Yentob about Kids Company’s financial stability by comparing its model to the kinds of start up companies he used to fund. Yentob rejects the comparison.
Updated
Batmanghelidjh repeats her claim, first made this summer, that the government has contributed to Kids Company’s downfall by leaking confidential documents to the press.
There has been an enormous amount of leaking from government offices into the media and right now the staff don’t feel secure because confidential papers from the Cabinet Office have been leaked.
Oliver Dowden asks if Batmanghelidjh’s role as both carer and manager led to difficulties. She insists that it did not and that she had teams in both areas to support her. Lack of funding was the problem, she says.
Batmanghelidjh insists she’s only been to dinner once with Yentob and the other trustees, as MPs try to probe what happened behind the scenes at Kids Company.
#KidsCompany is trending on Twitter. Here is a taster of the things that people are saying about the select committee hearing.
Did Camila just suggest that social services have mislead the select committee? #kidscompany
— Dr James Treadwell (@James_Treadwell) October 15, 2015
#kidscompany MP's investigating possible corruption. Does it get any more ironic?
— Big Dave (@BigDaveBigsense) October 15, 2015
#kidscompany How were so many intelligent people taken in by a person who describes herself as having "very severe learning difficulties"
— when-wisdom-fails (@whenwisdomfails) October 15, 2015
It's some success of #kidscompany reps to annoy every member of the Public Administration committee
— Tony Hatfield (@tonyhatfield) October 15, 2015
Batmanghelidjh calls for an audit of social services’ treatment of the cases handed over by Kids Company.
I can only go by the evidence of my own caseload and I would say in the spirit of fairness there should be a proper, comprehensive and independent-of-government audit of what social services did with those cases that were handed over.
“Why don’t you hand over your files,” one MP interrupted as she made her statement.
What stopped your staff handing out money “willy nilly”, Oliver Dowden asks after pointing out that social services had assessed that money was being spent on clients that simply didn’t need it. Batmanghelidjh responds:
That money is attached to individual children and young people with needs. The department of education actually worked very closely with us to determine who those young people were and they audited us against those young people’s outcomes ...
These are allegations that are being thrown against Kids Company without foundation.
Buzzfeed writer Alan White picked up on this comment by Paul Flynn.
Camila Batmanghelidjh just got accused of providing a "torrent of verbal ectoplasm" by an MP.
— Alan White (@aljwhite) October 15, 2015
Further explaining the significant disparity between the number of clients Kids Company had on its books and the numbers handed over, Batmanghelidjh tells MPs:
When the authorities wanted us to hand cases over they had a telephone meeting with us where they actually described the kinds of cases that they wanted to take ... They didn’t want any people with no status unless there was a child protection issue and consequently that narrowed down our referrals.
They were also prepared to look at people with extreme mental health difficulties and that’s what we did, we narrowed down the client group to what they were prepared to take and that’s what we handed over.
However, Kate Hoey subsequently read out a letter from Southwark council disputing this claim that they only wanted the records of certain clients.
Our connection to the live feed has dropped out. While we wait for it to come back here is some background on the collapse of Kids Company and the revelations about its operation since then (from PA):
Batmangheldijh and Yentob’s appearance comes a day after an investigation by BBC’s Newsnight and BuzzFeed News uncovered documents raising concerns about the charity’s management dating back to 2002.
They found issues were being raised with trustees and regulators over several years, with two charities that worked with Kids Company expressing reservations about the way it was managed.
The documents show Kids Company gave a series of excuses for not supplying the Pilgrim Trust with information, ranging from a “specific learning disability” which prevented Ms Batmanghelidjh from using a computer keyboard, to a bank manager responsible for reproducing withdrawal slips being off sick after “falling off a roof”.
The PA report adds:
Whitehall’s spending watchdog has launched an investigation into Government grants to Kids Company.
The National Audit Office (NAO) inquiry is examining a 3 million taxpayer-funded grant handed by ministers to Kids Company earlier this year against the advice of a senior civil servant, as well as a further 4 million grant made shortly before the charity was shut down in August.
Kids Company is also the subject of a statutory investigation by the Charity Commission and an inquiry by the Constitutional Affairs Committee.
Mr Yentob, who is also the BBC’s creative director, has previously insisted he has not influenced the corporation’s coverage of the charity’s troubles, and in August denied there was a conflict of interest after he called Newsnight about another report it did on the charity.
If you want to watch the hearing of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee for yourself it is being broadcast on the parliamentlive.tv website.
“Some people were getting £160 a week, isn’t that an inducement for people to identify themselves as in need of your services?” asks Flynn.
Paul Flynn is questioning Batmanghelidjh as to why the numbers of clients handed over to local authorities were so much lower than the number Kids Company claimed to have on their books. The charity’s records claimed to have 36,000 clients, but only 1,069 were handed over, he said.
Batmanghelidjh is facing searching questions about the way that way that Kids Company handed money to clients. She said:
When legislation changed and people without status [ie asylum seekers] were not able to claim benefits that means the mothers and their children were starving.
She insists that money was only handed to children and their families after a rigorous oversight process involving a number of mental health professionals. MPs are suggesting that after the money was handed over, Kids Company lost control of what it was spent on.
“There are large numbers of young children who are being abysmally failed by their government because they are not being protected and they are not being cared for appropriately,” Batmanghelidjh says.
She is answering questions about the money spent on children, and how it was spent - a central criticism of the way that Kids Company operated.
“I don’t think all of these organisations would have collaborated with kids company if it was all fraudulent,” says Yentob, defending the charity against suggestions from MPs that it somehow influenced the evaluations made of it.
Yentob tells MPs that he doesn’t know how many organisations that have had so many evaluations as Kids Company, reeling off a list of eminent organisations that have probed the charity’s practices.
Batmanghelidjh is talking about how how the charity worked and the challenges it faced.
We were getting young people who were literally so mentally ill they were hearing voices ...
This is a result of chronic substance abuse since they were young children.
Two months after the collapse of Kids Company, the founder of the charity will be quizzed by MPs about how it was run.
Camila Batmanghelidjh and the charity’s chairman of trustees, Alan Yentob, will face the Commons Public Administration Committee where they are expected to be questioned about how taxpayers’ money was used.
Their appearance comes a day after an investigation by BBC’s Newsnight and BuzzFeed News uncovered documents raising concerns about the charity’s management dating back to 2002.
We will be liveblogging the action as it happens.
