WE APOLOGISE THAT THIS WAS NOT SENT EARLIER IN THE DAY Motion made,
and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Heather
Wheeler.) 5.01 pm Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab) I
declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on women’s
health. I am grateful to have secured the final debate before the
recess to raise the issue of period poverty. I have touched on this
matter before in this...Request free
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WE APOLOGISE THAT THIS WAS NOT SENT EARLIER IN THE DAY
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Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this House do now adjourn.—(Heather Wheeler.)
5.01 pm
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(Dewsbury)
(Lab)
I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on
women’s health.
I am grateful to have secured the final debate before the
recess to raise the issue of period poverty. I have touched on
this matter before in this House in the context of
homelessness. I wish to expand on that, and also to talk about
the shocking recent reports of period poverty among school-age
girls in west Yorkshire. The phenomenon of period poverty has
gone under the radar for some time and is only now starting to
be discussed after the successes of the campaign against the
tampon tax. It is a unique challenge faced by women in poverty,
who all too often face a choice between buying sanitary
products or food. In the worst-case scenario, homeless women
have been faced with a choice between stealing sanitary
products and doing without.
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(Bradford South)
(Lab)
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that women using sanitary
products beyond their recommended duration are at risk of toxic
shock syndrome, and that homeless women, in particular,
self-ration these products at great risk to their health?
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I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I will be coming
to the issue of toxic shock syndrome and other associated
health conditions, but she makes that crucial point very
well.
The horror of these choices cannot be overstated, and they are
choices that women in one of the most advanced industrial
nations on earth should not face. Period poverty represents
nothing less than the affected women being robbed of their
human dignity. As an illustration of this, the Salvation Army
has relayed to me the experiences at its Darlington Citadel
food bank, where women have turned up literally begging for
sanitary products. With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker,
I will quote its commanding officer in full, because I believe
that the House really needs to hear this:
“Since we have started supplying”
sanitary products,
“with tears in their eyes many women have told us what they do
when they can’t afford them. They use rolled up socks, they rip
up clothing, they even use newspaper, they stuff these into
their underwear as makeshift sanitary wear—or they simply have
to free bleed. These women however, struggle to pay for
electricity and so doing laundry to a sufficient level to kill
any bacteria is a problem and they are putting themselves and
their daughters at risk of infection resulting in possible
medical treatment with antibiotics or even hospitalization.
Some women have informed us that they have needed dilation and
curettage treatment and courses of antibiotics for infections,
costing the NHS money and resources.”
Unfortunately, this testimony does not stand alone. An
investigation by Amanda Ternblad of Goldsmiths University into
period poverty in London has found that some women resort to
using toilet roll, which can pose a risk of thrush infection,
or using sanitary products for longer than they should be
used—that follows on from the point made by my hon. Friend the
Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins)—which can lead
to fatal toxic shock syndrome and the risk of further
long-standing health problems. Of course, that costs the NHS in
the long run, but that should be as nothing compared with the
desperation, indignity, humiliation and degradation visited on
those women, who are already among the most vulnerable in our
society. That should beggar belief in one of the wealthiest
nations on the planet.
The problem is most pronounced for women who are homeless, who
typically have no stable source of income with which to buy
sanitary products. In the debate on homelessness on 14 December
2016, I mentioned that homeless shelters get an allowance from
the Government to provide items such as condoms and razors, but
they have no such allowance to buy sanitary products, leaving
them reliant on charity donations instead.
When I last raised that point in the House, the Under-Secretary
of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member
for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), said that the Government provides
funding for outreach services for homeless people, meaning that
such facilities would ultimately be funded anyway.
Unfortunately, the point is that there appears to be a
shortfall in toiletries such as sanitary protection for women.
In many places in the UK, condoms are given away for free, and
there is a clear and well-understood public argument for that.
Why, then, is that not commonplace for sanitary products, which
every woman requires, and the absence of which can have grave
health consequences? Although valuable work has been done in
the past couple of years by organisations such as St Mungo’s to
ensure that homelessness services are gender-appropriate, the
Government’s allowance for such products does not appear to
have kept pace and speaks to something of a male-dominated view
of homelessness.
In reality, women who are homeless face numerous unique
challenges, from their personal safety, to vulnerability and
falling into prostitution. Those challenges, while grave, have
in various ways been targeted before by the good works of
homelessness charities. Period poverty, however, is one of the
unique challenges for women that has been under-represented,
which makes it all the more important that it is now taken
seriously.
The reliance on charity is a problem in itself. Donations of
sanitary products to food banks and homeless shelters are often
not enough to keep up with demand, while supply is variable
across the country, meaning that the donations are not always
made in the areas with most demand. The Homeless Period
campaign is an attempt to gain more attention for the problem
and to secure more donations of sanitary items to homeless
shelters and food banks so that their stocks are more readily
available. I again wish to pay tribute to the incredible work
of Laura Coryton, who campaigned so effectively with me on the
issue of the tampon tax, for her work in bringing the issue to
wider public attention.
As part of my support for the campaign, I have secured a trial
of a donation point for toiletries at a Boots store in Dewsbury
to go to the Fusion Housing charity, which supports food banks
in the Kirklees area. It is a small step, but I hope that many
more like it can be achieved in the near future and that they
will make a difference.
If, as we sadly now find, the Government are content to let
charity supplant welfare in providing for the needy in our
society, I will call on other companies to follow the example
of Boots. Every area will have similar problems, and similar
charities will try to cope with them. Many companies that deal
with toiletries could set up similar schemes as part of their
wider corporate responsibility to their communities. I was
encouraged by an example on a recent trip to Brussels, where a
hotel chain was donating surplus toiletries to its local
facility for the homeless. With a bit of ingenuity, companies
can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the
most vulnerable—as could this Government.
It is not, however, just homeless women who are vulnerable to
period poverty. I was absolutely appalled—actually, I was
heartbroken—by the recent BBC Radio Leeds report that a west
Yorkshire charity called Freedom4Girls, which usually sends
sanitary products to girls in Kenya, had been contacted by a
school in Leeds to provide sanitary products to girls there.
Concerns were raised after girls were found to be playing
truant because they could not afford sanitary protection. I ask
everyone to take a moment to consider what is happening in one
of the richest nations in the world.
As with the homeless women in the examples I mentioned earlier,
the same makeshift and risky remedies had been tried. We heard
about 15-year-old girls sellotaping toilet roll to their
knickers because they could not afford tampons or sanitary
towels. Girls would rather not attend school than go through
the indignity of doing so in a vulnerable state. There are
related reports of teachers having to pay for sanitary products
for their pupils. That, too, beggars belief. Schools are the
perfect place for the Government to enact early intervention on
matters relating to women’s health, as has been borne out by
the valuable human papilloma virus vaccination programme. I
urge the Government to investigate how the problem of period
poverty can be tackled in schools, for example by including
menstrual health in sex and relationships education and by
looking at the possibility of using eligibility for free school
meals for the provision of sanitary products to vulnerable
young girls.
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(Colne Valley)
(Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate
and praise her for the passionate way in which she speaks about
the issue, on which she has campaigned for a long time. I have
heard the BBC Radio Leeds report about the girls in school. I
am a father to young girls, as she knows, so it was something
that hit me. Has she thought about whether the tampon tax funds
that are being distributed at the moment could be directed to
support girls from low-income backgrounds with tampons and
sanitary towels? Perhaps pupil premium money could be used, or
boosted, to help to provide those much-needed products to girls
so that they do not have to go through the horrible situation
that the west Yorkshire girls faced.
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I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I note that
the first time we debated the tampon tax in this House, he
chose to vote to keep it, but I do take on board what he says
about the tampon tax funds. I would much rather see the tax
removed from sanitary products, but while it is still there—I
appreciate that Brexit causes complications—I would absolutely
support some of the money going towards schools.
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I remember the night when the hon. Lady forced a vote on the
tampon tax. As she is well aware, it is due to EU regulation.
She had a lot of cross-party support, and this is not party
political—it is about coming together to look after young,
vulnerable girls, and homeless people. The Government are
trying to address that with their approach on the tampon tax.
As she knows, through cross-party working, we can help those
vulnerable women, rather than scoring puerile, partisan
points.
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The existence of this problem in our schools speaks to my grave
concern that we are seeing just the tip of the iceberg. I dare
say that if we looked hard enough, up and down the country, we
would find examples of similar schools whose girls face the
same problem. Leeds City Council has the same concern. It
notes:
“This issue has happened in Leeds—a city where services for
children are judged to be ‘Good’ and over 90% of schools are
judged to be ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted—and as such
could be happening in towns and cities right across the
UK.”
The Salvation Army has said that
“it appears that this phenomenon may be more widespread”.
We need to ask ourselves what is so fundamentally broken with
our society that the poorest families, even those in work and
secure housing, cannot afford sanitary protection for their
daughters.
When the House returns from the recess, the two-child cap under
the Government’s universal credit will have come into effect.
The poverty that led the girls in Leeds into this position
existed even before that, but I ask the Government whether they
honestly believe that their changes will not make the situation
even worse. The Opposition have repeatedly said that any such
limit to child tax credit will serve only to punish unjustly
the children involved. I fear that we may be setting a time
bomb of poverty, misery and indignity for the underprivileged
girls of the future if we do not act now to ensure that period
poverty goes no further.
My sense of sadness about this issue comes not only from the
assault on the health and dignity of the women involved—as I
have repeatedly said, they are some of the most vulnerable in
our society—but from the fact that the whole situation is
absolutely avoidable. It is no accident of history that these
women are being left in such a vulnerable situation; it is a
direct result of the obsession with austerity of this
Government and their coalition predecessor, which is
disproportionately hitting the poorest in society. Many
families now experience in-work poverty because of increasingly
insecure jobs and hours. That leaves thousands of women at risk
of being unable to afford sanitary products, with many on the
precipice of rent arrears or in danger of losing their home
altogether.
This sorry state of affairs was not always the case. Under the
previous Labour Government, rough sleeping was nearly
eliminated, but last year it increased by 16%—the sixth
successive annual rise. In the final year of the previous
Labour Government, 41,000 people were given aid by Trussell
Trust food banks, compared with over 1.1 million in 2015-16. It
should go without saying that when more women are homeless and
more are relying on food banks just to get by, period poverty
is going to be an increasing problem.
I implore the Government today—I beg the Minister—to find the
political will to ensure that these horrors are not visited on
any more women in our country. In the words of Tina Leslie of
Freedom4Girls,
“we need to give these girls their dignity back.”
May I finish by taking this opportunity, Madam Deputy Speaker,
to wish you, the other Deputy Speakers and Mr Speaker a very
happy Easter? I thank all the staff of the House who,
particularly during the past seven or eight days, have
performed their jobs at the most incredible level. I also pay
tribute to those affected by last week’s horrendous Westminster
attack, especially the families of the bereaved.
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5.15 pm
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The
Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jane
Ellison)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) on
her continuing and committed work in ensuring the affordability
of sanitary products. During the passage of last year’s Finance
Bill, she and I had reason to discuss this issue on several
occasions, not least in relation to her successful amendment to
reduce the level of VAT on sanitary products. I of course stand
by the pledges the Government made at the time. Those pledges
have been legislated for, as she knows and has acknowledged. I
recognise, as I think all hon. Members do, the clear and
evident passion with which she spoke, and we know how sincerely
she campaigns for the rights of women and girls. I hope to be
able to respond to some extent, if not to all her wider points,
at least to some of the specific points she made.
Before I narrow down to the specific points, let me turn to the
broader ones. The Government have been clear that tackling
disadvantage is a priority for us. That includes taking action
to help the most disadvantaged, with a real focus on tackling
not the symptoms but the root causes of poverty. We are
determined to reform the welfare system to incentivise work and
to help people to achieve their potential. We believe that, as
we have seen during the past six years, our reforms have helped
to improve lives and living standards for some of the most
vulnerable in our country, most prominently by helping people
to get back into work.
That is why in our approach to general taxation we are
increasing the personal allowance to £12,500 by the end of this
Parliament. Next week, increases in the personal allowance and
higher rate threshold will have cut taxes for 31 million people
and taken 1.3 million of the lowest paid out of income tax
altogether, compared with 2015-16. A significant proportion of
them will of course be women. Next week, we will increase the
national living wage to £7.50 an hour, which marks a £1,400 a
year increase in earnings for a full-time worker on the
national minimum wage since the introduction of the national
living wage in April 2016. It is also why we are reducing the
universal credit taper to 63% from April, so people who
progress into work can keep more of what they earn, which will
enhance the support provided to working families in meeting
day-to-day costs; why we will double free childcare to 30 hours
a week, which is worth up to £5,000 a year for eligible working
parents of three and four-year-olds; and why we will introduce
tax-free childcare in the coming month. These are just some of
a range of measures that we are taking to ensure that work
always pays and that hard-working families can earn more and
keep more of the money they earn. It is by taking these
steps that we are supporting ordinary working families,
including the women about whom the hon. Lady spoke.
Let me turn to the tampon tax fund, because we have had a
timely update from the Under-Secretary of State for Culture,
Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr
Wilson), who is the Minister for Civil Society. I will take a
moment—I think I have enough time—to update the House on some
of the work that the fund is going to support. That is
important, not least in the light of the hon. Lady’s successful
campaign to change the law so that we reduce VAT, as soon as we
practically can, as has been mentioned, within the constraints
of EU law. In the meantime, we have established the £15 million
a year tampon tax fund, which, as hon. Members will know, is
equivalent to the amount of VAT paid on sanitary products each
year.
Since the 2015 autumn statement, £32 million of tampon tax
funding has been allocated to women’s charities. The majority
of that funding is through grants to frontline charities that
aim to improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls.
Those include health, wellbeing and education initiatives and
support services for vulnerable women. A significant proportion
of this round’s funding will focus on initiatives that help to
tackle violence against women and girls—something that all of
us across this House want to see borne down on—alongside a
broader criterion to support disadvantaged women and girls.
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I saw today’s update on where the tampon tax funds have gone.
Rather than point scoring, I want something positive to come
from this debate. Will the Minister please consider using some
of those funds to help with supplies of sanitary products for
schools, to make sure that all girls, no matter what their
economic background, have access to tampons, pads and
towels?
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Jane
Ellison
I will certainly draw my hon. Friend’s comments to the
attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East, the
Minister for Civil Society, and I will come to some of the
support available in schools and the work already under way as
a response to recent questions in Parliament.
My hon. Friend the Minister for Civil Society has today
announced the full list of funding for charities from the
latest round of the tampon tax fund. That means that more than
90 charities are now set to benefit from the fund over this
Parliament. The fund continues to benefit organisations in
every corner of the UK, from Children North East to the Women’s
Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre in Cornwall. It is helping to
improve the lives of women and girls who suffer disadvantage,
supporting our wider ambition to create a fairer society for
everyone.
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I recognise that some excellent charities are receiving funds
from the tampon tax, including Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust,
which I been working with very closely. How will those
charities be provided for when we finally see the abolition of
the tampon tax, which I hope will come very soon?
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Jane
Ellison
Indeed; that is something we have explored in debates. We said
at the time that while this is inevitably a time-limited fund
by its nature, we will look at all those issues in the
round. It is, of course, only one of a number of sources from
which we support civil society organisations. I am glad that
the hon. Lady picked out Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, a charity
that I greatly enjoyed working with when I was at the
Department of Health and that does excellent work.
A number of worthwhile organisations are going to benefit from
the money, and the Government have committed to continuing the
fund until EU rules allow a zero rate of VAT to be applied on
women’s sanitary products, or until the UK leaves the
EU—whichever comes first within the legal framework. The hon.
Lady mentioned this in her speech, but I note that she has
recently championed national retailers in her constituency to
support the cause through charitable means, as she has outlined
today, for those least able to afford sanitary products. I
noted her work with her local Boots on that.
Turning to practical matters, like hon. Members on both sides
of the House, I, too, heard the same BBC Radio Leeds report
that has been referred to. It was a distressing listen. It was
very difficult to hear about the girls in Leeds who were unable
to attend school because they could not afford sanitary
products. Of course, if this country is going to work for
everyone, we clearly need an education system that enables
people to achieve their potential. That is the Government’s
clear aspiration. If someone cannot attend school on the days
that they are having their period, it is obviously much harder
for them to reach their potential.
My hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney)
talked about school funding. Schools do have discretion over
how they use their funding. The Department for Education does
not currently give schools guidance on this specific issue, as
we believe that headteachers should be able to use their
professional judgment. However, we do encourage all schools to
use their resources to support their pupils to be safe, healthy
and ready to learn each day, so schools are free to support
girls in this way if they need to. The evidence is clear—we
have all seen that every extra day of school missed can affect
a pupil’s chances of achieving good GCSEs, with a lasting
effect on their life chances. We therefore strongly encourage
all parents and schools to do everything they can to support
children to attend schools.
The hon. Member for Dewsbury made a number of suggestions about
funding. As one would expect, that question has been raised in
recent days by a number of hon. Members. In fact, in response
to the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), the
Secretary of State for Education acknowledged the importance of
the issue and said that she is looking carefully at it, and she
has undertaken to write to him. I think there is more to be
said by the Department for Education on this subject. The
Secretary of State was very clear about the seriousness with
which she takes the issue and her own commitment to gender
equality is well documented.
We touched on the support available through the education
system and the wider welfare system. We talked about the legal
commitment we have made to zero-rating sanitary products as
soon as possible, fully recognising the importance of the
issue. In the meantime, we are using the VAT we receive to
benefit women’s charities. I hope those responses go some way
towards addressing the issues raised in the debate.
More widely, I believe the Government can hold their head up
high on supporting women. The gender pay gap is at a record low
and the number of women in work is close to a record high. We
are one of the first countries in the world to introduce gender
pay gap reporting, but we always acknowledge that we can go
further. As I mentioned earlier, the national living wage will
be increased to £7.50 an hour from next month. We expect that
two thirds of those who will benefit from the rise in the
national living wage will be women.
As well as continuing our efforts to get more women back into
the workplace, we are providing an additional £20 million of
funding over this Parliament to support organisations working
to tackle domestic violence and abuse—a strong personal
priority for the Prime Minister. She has committed to bringing
forward a domestic violence and abuse Bill. The funding I have
just mentioned increases the total funding for the Government’s
violence against women and girls strategy to £100 million over
this Parliament.
The hon. Lady raised the additional vulnerability of homeless
women, which I think we all acknowledge. In October, the Prime
Minister announced a new £40 million programme to provide an
innovative approach to tackling homelessness, with prevention
at its heart, looking at the complex underlying causes that I
think all of us as constituency MPs acknowledge can lead to a
person losing their home. That includes a £10 million rough
sleeping prevention fund and £20 million for local authorities
to trial new initiatives for those most at risk. I will
draw the hon. Lady’s particular concerns about the additional
vulnerabilities of homeless women to the Under-Secretary of
State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the
Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones).
All in all, the Government are committed to supporting those
who are struggling to get by. I congratulate the hon. Lady on
bringing this important issue to the attention of Parliament.
We feel that by taking steps to improve the living standards of
ordinary working families across the country, committing to
eliminating the VAT charge on sanitary products, and striving
to provide greater equality more generally for women, the
Government are showing they are sensitive to these issues.
There are 200,000 fewer children in low-income households than
in 2010, which is one of the ways in which we have demonstrated
our commitment to tackling the root causes of disadvantage. I
hope that in my response today I have shown that the Government
take these issues seriously. We are looking carefully at the
points raised today and will aim to respond further to
them.
In closing, I echo the words of the hon. Lady in paying tribute
to the actions of many of the staff of the House in recent
days, and in wishing you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as well as hon.
Members on all sides and all staff of the House, a restful
Easter recess.
Question put and agreed to.
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