Chancellor announces £15m fund for women’s charities and £25m Libor fine awards

25 Nov 2015 News

George Osborne has announced a £15m fund for women’s charities and outlined further awards from Libor fines to various military charities in his Spending Review and Autumn Statement.

George Osborne has announced a £15m fund for women’s charities and outlined further awards from Libor fines to various military charities.

Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that he would put the £15m a year raised from the 'Tampon Tax' towards a fund for women’s health and support charities.

He said that this fund would continue to exist until such time as the government can change the EU rules around charging Value Added Tax to sanitary products.

“300,000 people have signed a petition arguing that no VAT should be charged on sanitary products,” said Osborne. “We already charge the lowest 5 per cent rate allowable under European law and we’re committed to getting the EU rules changed.

“Until that happens, I’m going to use the £15m a year raised from the Tampon Tax to fund women’s health and support charities.”

Osborne said that the government would make an initial £5m donation to four charities - the Eve Appeal, SafeLives, Women's Aid and The Haven - and invited “bids from other such good causes”. A further set of donations from this fund will be announced in the first budget of 2016.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Women’s Aid, said: “We are also pleased that the contribution from government forms parts of a wider £15m pot for women’s organisations, which our national and local partners can apply for to support the lifesaving work that they are doing.

“However, today the Chancellor announced that this money will come from the taxation on sanitary products. Whilst we welcome this money being used to help women, especially at a time where the government are campaigning for sanitary tax to be zero-rated, we need to be clear that domestic abuse is not just a women’s problem for taxation on women’s products to solve – it is an issue for everyone in society and men and women must address it together.”

Additional awards to be made from Libor fines

The Chancellor also announced that the government will be making another tranche of grants worth £25m over the next three years to military charities from money raised through Libor fines.

“Today I make further awards from them (Libor fines) too. We’ll support a host of military charities, from Guide Dogs for Military Veterans to Care After Combat,” said Osborne.

“We’ll renovate our military museums – from the Royal Marines and D-Day Museums in Portsmouth, to the National Army Museum, to Hooton Park aerodrome, and the former HQ of RAF Fighter Command at Bentley Priory.”

In his speech, the Chancellor also said he would support the fellowships awarded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and fund the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Among the list of organisations to receive funding, the Guide Dogs for Military Veterans will receive £4.7m, veteran support charity Care After Combat will receive £1m and the Invictus Games will receive £250,000 for the 2016 ‘Invictus Games’.

A full list of military charities receiving Libor funding available here.