Press statement in response to Chancellor’s intention to remove Tampon Tax

Saturday 7^th March 2020

Women’s Resource Centre welcomes Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s scrapping of the Tampon Tax with a challenge to find the missing £700 million

The women’s rights charity, Women’s Resource Centre has supported the decades of campaigning by women for the abolishment of the Tampon Tax. 

In response to the Chancellor’s expected announcement about the scrapping of the tax on Budget day, Vivienne Hayes MBE, CEO at WRC said:

“This is a great small step in the right direction. Now let’s see the £700 million collected from women going back to where it was promised – women’s health and support charities. Given the fact that women’s health and support charities save the Government approximately half a billion pounds every year, that’s a whopping £20 billion in the time that £700 million was collected in VAT. So we think it is only fair we get that debt paid back to our life saving charities.”

Back in April 2019, Women’s Resource Centre started a petition allowing women to share their voice and support over the unfair monetary burden of periods. Later in the year, the umbrella charity launched a fund raise project to support women across the UK in raising this issue with politicians and other influencers demanding the missing £700 million to be paid back to front line women’s charities which has been supported by the likes of Gemma Arterton and Patricia Lamour MBE.