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Greg Mulholland-Working Hard For Leeds North WestMPs meet Treasury Minister to discuss VAT relief for healthcare charities
April 27, 2012 10:54 AM
Greg Mulholland MP has met with Treasury Minister David Gauke MP to discuss the ongoing campaign to see VAT relief for healthcare charities. Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat, Leeds North West), Kris Hopkins (Con, Keighley and Ilkley) and Nic Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe) were joined by representatives from Sue Ryder, which runs Wheatfields Hospice in Headingley , to discuss the latest developments in the campaign.
Under the Governments current stream of thought, charitable healthcare providers will take on more front line health care from the NHS, however if Sue Ryder's Wheatfields Hospice, in Headingley, was run by the NHS it would be able to recover 48% of VAT on non-business supplies, yet as a charitable organisations, they cannot. This creates a situation where the Treasury are set to create and extra revenue stream from the VAT from charitable health care providers because of the shift of front line healthcare to them.
Since securing the first meeting with the Minister, Greg has tabled an Early Day Motion and co signed a 10-minute rule Bill, calling on the Government to provide tax relief for charitable health care providers, such as Sue Ryder.
Greg Mulholland MP commented:
"I am delighted that the Minister has again met with representatives of Sue Ryder and MPs to discuss this extremely important issue. It offered us another great opportunity to really stress to the Minister the importance of looking again at the current VAT situation for charitable healthcare providers
"Whilst I support the Government encouraging charitable healthcare providers to offer more front line health services, it is concerning that the Treasury is set to create a new revenue stream as a result of the current VAT system.
"I hope the minister will take on board everything we and the representatives of Sue Ryder had to say and give further consideration to the calls for providing charitable healthcare providers to be offered the same VAT relief as the NHS"
Commenting further, Sue Ryder CEO, Paul Woodward said:
"We know that the issue of irrecoverable VAT will become a significant barrier to charities taking over NHS healthcare services in the future.
"Meeting with David Gauke gave us the opportunity to voice our concerns and keep our campaign at the heart of the government. We look forward to making further progress on this issue and are very grateful to Greg, Kris and Nic for all the commitment and support they have given to the charity."