The UKIP leader has shown his contempt for women's bodies numerous times - yet he's trying to woo female voters by promising what other parties won't
UKIP announced yesterday that it wants to scrap the VAT on tampons. Currently, women’s sanitary products are classed as ‘non-essential luxury items’ by the Treasury, meaning they are taxed at five per cent.
UKIP’s head of policy Suzanne Evans is absolutely right to call the tampon tax ‘outrageous and outdated’. When you consider that condoms and the pill are free on the NHS, the fact that we pay for tampons at all seems ludicrous; it’s all part of the same system!
The list of things that George Osborne considers to be more essential than tampons includes:
Ornamental vegetables
Alcoholic jellies
Helicopters
Twiglets
Antiques
In February, David Cameron promised a group of students that he would look into the law:
“Some VAT things you can change. Other VAT things, if they’re linked to other products, it’s quite difficult to do it within the framework of European laws and I can’t remember the answer.
“I think it’s very difficult to do but I’ll have to go away and have a look and come back to you.”
– but has yet to make any further comment. Labour, the Greens and the SNP have so far been silent on the issue.
So it is great that UKIP have drawn attention to the issue; I hope that David Cameron and Ed Miliband will realise that they cannot allow a party as misogynistic as UKIP to outdo them on something so obvious as tampon tax.
Just to recap on UKIP’s usual view on women:
Nigel Farage has described paid maternity leave as ‘lunacy’:
“With this lunacy, that if you have children you get three months paid leave off work, or six months paid leave off work – [Godfrey Bloom] absolutely got it spot on.
“His comments get to the absolute heart of the problem of the EU. Social policy against employment policy…that’s why there are over 20 million unemployed in the EU.”
Mr Farage thinks that women are ‘worth less’ to City employers for ‘biological reasons’, and that breastfeeding mothers should ‘sit in a corner’. Meanwhile UKIP want to make it legal to discriminate on grounds of gender, (as well as race) and numerous MPs have been caught making sexist comments about ‘sluts’, women in the workplace, and the existence of marital rape. For a full list of these see here.
So it will be bad news if UKIP’s announcement on the tampon tax manages to woo more female voters. We will have reached a situation of sheer insanity if Nigel Farage is the only leader standing up to end this unfair tax on women’s hygiene.
Of course, what the pledge really is is a way to sell UKIP’s anti-EU message to a different demographic. UKIP say we cannot end the tampon tax whilst we are still in the EU. Because no European country can exempt something that is taxed under EU law, removing the tax would require a Europe-wide effort.
But European laws can be changed, so long as there is consensus across the continent.
As campaigner Laura Coryton has pointed out, these things happen in small steps, but someone needs to take the first one. If the chancellor signed up to end the tax, the petition could grow to the point that it could be presented to the European Parliament. We need the support of our government if we are to lobby for change in the EU.
This is an issue that affects all European women; sanitary products are taxed at 27 per cent in Hungary, and 20 per cent in France. But besides the actual numbers, there is a principle we must defend: the rights of women to access products that are absolutely necessary for them to function, and necessary for hygiene and dignity.
So please, Westminster – don’t let Nigel Farage be the only one who stands up for it.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
49 Responses to “Please don’t let Nigel Farage be the only one who stands up to the tampon tax”
Jack
Just think, the women in that photo sat at home at their kitchen tables colouring in placards and making imitation tampons in the belief that standing out in the street and waving them about was an effective way to change tax law. Why do people do such things? The utter futility of it. Still, it was a nice day out for them and probably made them feel part of something.
Smithersjones2013
What legalities? UKIPs policies are predicated on the UK leaving the EU not unreasonably so it would be perfectly reasonable for them to exempt any items from VAT. In fact under such circumstances they could scrap VAT and replace it with a totally new regime of retail taxes if they wanted.
Smithersjones2013
I think it is highly unlikely that the establishment parties will say
anything about this policy. They value our membership of the EU far more
than they value the women of this country.
The thing is from
Brussels perspective this will not be about sanitary products but about
the concept of exempting an item once it has been deemed to attract VAT.
Under cxurrent rules that is forbidden. As such they will not do
anything about it for the simple reason it sets a precedent which could justifiably be argued for energy in thIs country, food in other countries and so forth.
Such a precedent could undermine the effectiveness of EU taxation at a
time when Brussels wants to promote tax harmonisation across the EU.
If
the precedent were set, how long then would it be before someone thinks
its a good idea to exempt everything from VAT and sets up alternative
retail taxes? Brussels consequently are loath to change such rules.
I
also find it particularly disturbing how misrepresentative and
prejudiced this article is. It doesn’t even mention that the proposal
was announced by two of UKIPs senior female politicians both of whom are
tipped to be the next leader. If UKIP were such a bastion of male
chauvinism surely they would not even have been on the platform let
alone given the responsibility and profile to announce it or be tipped
as future leaders?
Perhaps supporters of other parties should
list the failures of the Labour party and not least that at the start of
this government they had I believe it was 6 MPs sent to prison. 5 for
expenses fraud, 1 for election fraud and were lucky not to have had a
couple of dozen others sent to jail with them including Ministers.
Should the Labour party forever more be condemned as a party of crooks?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal
And
of course lets not forget about the antics of the likes of Sion SImon,
Damian McBride and Derek Draper during the last Parliament none of whom
seem to have any respect for women at all. Given their ‘sins’ against
women fall well within the timescales of the behaviour referred to here
relating to UKIP and furthermore given Labour have not even mentioned this proposal who in fact really are the bad guys?
As I understand it the likes of McBride and Simon are still members of the Labour party whereas of course Bloom for example has been expelled from UKIP.
In
comparison UKIP’s ‘crimes’ against gender entitlement are small indeed to Labour’s crimes
and that they have proposed this policy and are putting women at the
forefront of their party demonstrates that they do have the interests of
women in mind.
PS The author talks of UKIP ‘MP’s’. The only
UKIP MP’s are Doug Carswell and Mark Reckless and to my knowledge
neither have made any such statements as the author suggests. As such this article is defamatory and libelous. Perhaps she might amend it to say ‘MEP’s’ and save herself a law suit?
Smithersjones2013
VAT rules can only be changed by the EU. The UK Government has no sovereignty over them.
a) Get Brussels to change the VAT rules (not going to happen)
b) Get special permission from the EU which is extremely unlikely because of the precedent it sets.
c) Withdraw from the EU
Leon Wolfeson
I don’t care about UKIP’s fantasies.