Lord Mandelson is set to hit Charities with a £20m tax bill by abolishing an exemption from music licensing rules. As a result, charities will be forced to abandon services for the elderly and children, which will now be too expensive to hold due to the tax.

The abolition of the exemption will mean that charities will have to cough up to play music at discos, dances, and even when playing a CD in a charity shop. It will even affect shops who have a radio in their staff room – not necessarily being played to customers!

The government’s own impact assessment claims that it will affect 140,000 charities, 45,000 religious buildings, over 6,5000 charity shops, and the licence will be so expensive that many organisations will just “cease playing music”.

The NCVO has reacted strongly by starting a campaign to highlight the effect of the abolition of the exemption. A handful of MPs have signed a Commons motion to retain the exemption, although the wheels appear to be in motion.

We say: The government does enough to take money away from charities, and this is pretty heartless. The licencing tax should only be used when the music helps the organisation playing it make a profit. Even the musicians must be up in arms over this ridiculous suggestion from Lord Mandelson. We say go to the NCVO website, and sign up to the campaign immediately to stop this ridiculous measure, before it affects our charities!