“It would be perfectly reasonable for Britain to ask for
that,” he told the BBC’s Today programme. “It will be
part of the discussions.” Tory MPs have been up in arms
this week over the fact that Britain cannot cut the rate
of VAT on women’s sanitary products from the current 5
per cent, the lowest level permitted under EU rules.
Most goods attract a VAT rate of 20 per cent in the UK.
The esoteric issue has become a lightning rod for wider
discontent among eurosceptic members of the Conservative
party, many of whom are sympathetic to the idea of the
UK leaving the EU.
David Gauke, Treasury minister, promised this week to
raise the issue with the European Commission after
coming under pressure from Tory eurosceptics and
campaigners from other parties, including Caroline Lucas
of the Green Party and Paula Sherriff of Labour.
They want sanitary products to join the list of “essential” goods on which VAT
is not charged. This includes food, razors and children’s clothes, as well as
cremations and incontinence aids. The government narrowly avoided a Commons
defeat on the issue when an amendment to the finance bill was defeated by 305 to
287 votes.
Mr Gauke said the government sympathised with the cross-party campaign, which
has been running for many years. Mr Timmermans pointed out that the UK had never
asked for an exemption on sanitary products in the past. By contrast Ireland had
done so and therefore charged no VAT on them as a result.
A change in the rules would require a proposal from the commission and unanimity
among the EU’s 28 states. French MPs recently rejected a budget motion to cut
the rate of VAT on sanitary products in France from 20 to 5.5 per cent. David
Cameron was on Wednesday set to meet Nordic and Baltic leaders in Iceland at a
gathering of the Northern Future Forum.
The UK prime minister will use the event to challenge eurosceptics who argue
that Britain should leave the EU and adopt a “Norway-style” trading relationship
with the bloc. He believes campaigners advocating Brexit use flawed arguments
about the benefits to Britain of withdrawing from the EU while trying to
maintain its influence in the continent’s internal market.
“He believes it is important to highlight the questions Britain would face if it
left the EU and followed Norway’s model,” said a Downing Street official. The
prime minister has promised to hold a vote on the UK’s membership of the EU by
the end of 2017.
Although polls suggest Britain will vote to remain in the bloc, the gap seems to
have narrowed since the general election in May, amid concerns about the recent
Eurozone crisis and the EU’s inability to deal with mass immigration on its
southern borders.
Mr Timmermans said that countries bordering the EU, such as Norway and
Switzerland, were not immune from the immigration crisis: “They also see the
refugee problem as their problem,” he said. “They want to be part of it [the
solution], they have offered to be part of it.” Britain already had control of
its own borders, he said, given that it was not part of the Schengen free
movement agreement. “I’m not sure that Britain opting to leave the EU would make
things better for the UK,” he said.
Source: The Financial
Times, dated 28/10/2015.