GOVERNMENT officials “at the highest levels” knew about aid workers’ sex abuse but tried to keep it hushed up, a former Cabinet minister has claimed.

Ex-Development Secretary Priti Patel has revealed to The Sun that she fought a pitched battle with her own senior staff not to highlight the growing scandal last year.

Her claim came as her successor at DFID, Penny Mordaunt, accused Oxfam of failing in its “moral leadership” over a prostitutes scandal in Haiti.

Pressure grew on the under fire British charity as it was hit by more allegations on Sunday that its staff had also exploited needy local women in Chad.

Ms Patel spoke out against what she branded a “culture of denial” across the aid world that has been going on for years.

The senior Tory MP said: “Officials at the highest levels knew about this sort of thing.

“Why was a government department not calling for prosecutions, and taking money away from Oxfam as far back at 2011?

“People need to go away and ask questions about why they didn’t do more at the time.”

Ms Patel’s dust up over whether to air sex abuse concerns by charity and NGO workers came before a speech she gave to the UN in New York last September.

Senior DFID staff told the former minister – who resigned three months ago – that abuse had only been carried out by UN soldiers on peace keeping missions, and to claim otherwise was “over-stepping the mark”.

As the scandal deepened yesterday, it also emerged that 120 workers for Britain’s leading charities were accused of sexual abuse in the past year alone.

Fears are spiraling that paedophiles have specifically targetted overseas aid organisations.

But critics accused DFID of not wanting to act for fear of giving aid spending a bad name and tarnishing the controversial 0.7 per cent target.

Current Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt will on Monday haul in Oxfam’s bosses to demand they come clean on everything they know about staff abuse.

She also warned the charity that its government cash will be cut off unless it proves it has got a grip of the scandal.

Ms Mordaunt told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “They still have information they should be giving to authorities.

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“If the moral leadership at the top of the organization isn’t there, then we cannot have you as a partner”.

The government’s aid supremo also admitted charity donors will have been put off from giving by the shocking revelations.

Ms Mordaunt added: “Aid is good. But if we believe that, we have to reassure donors”.

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