Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent discussions he has had with the European Commission on the abolition of Value Added Tax on sanitary products.

Following the recent Parliamentary debate on this issue, I have written to the European Commission and other Member States setting out the Government’s view that Member States should have full discretion over what rate of VAT they can apply to sanitary products, and that this should be considered in the context of the Commission’s ambition to produce an Action Plan on VAT initiatives in 2016.