Combatting Period Poverty - Launch of Government scheme

Schona Jolly QC

Claire McCann

Three years ago, Amika George, then a 17-year old school girl, started #FreePeriods, a grassroots movement campaigning to highlight the issue of ‘Period Poverty’ and to seek ways of combatting it, including by petitioning the Government to provide free sanitary products in all schools and colleges in the UK. 

In March 2019, a parallel legalcampaign was launched by Free Periods and The Red Box Project, represented bythe human rights team at law firm, Hausfeld & Co, instructing Cloisters’barristers, SchonaJolly QC and ClaireMcCann.  The legal campaignchallenged the lack of free provision of sanitary products under the EqualityAct 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998, arguing that girls were beingdisadvantaged and discriminated against in their access to compulsoryeducation. 

The campaign, which includedcrowdfunding, has been massively successful, with the Government announcing lastyear that free period products would be made available in schools and collegesin England, the devolved Government in Wales making a similar commitment.  The Scheme in England is launched today, asreported widely in the Press:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51167487.

It has been a privilege forCloisters’ barristers to work on the legal campaign: all schools and collegesin England can now sign up for the scheme so that their pupils do not miss outon free period products.  Further detailsabout the scheme can be found here:  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/period-products-in-schools-and-colleges/period-product-scheme-for-schools-and-colleges-in-england.