Geldof calls for VAT refund on Live Aid DVD

Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof has appealed to governments around the world to allow VAT receipts on purchases of the new DVD …

Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof has appealed to governments around the world to allow VAT receipts on purchases of the new DVD of the 1985 Concert to be spent on aid for Africa.

Speaking at the launch of the DVD in London today, Mr Geldof said he wanted to make sure that every penny from the DVD went to support the poorest countries in Africa.

British chancellor Gordon Brown yesterday announced the UK Treasury would refund the VAT paid when people buy the CD. The same policy will apply to a remix CD of the song Do They Know It's Christmas?

Geldof called the donation, expected to be worth between £4 million and £8 million, "a remarkable gesture".

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The remixed CD, featuring Duran Duran, Phil Collins, Bananarama, Boy George and George Michael, will be out next month, 20 years after the release of the original. The Tory government in 1985 agreed to make a donation to charities working in Ethiopia and Chad equivalent to the VAT collected on sales of the original 1984 Band Aid record Do They Know It's Christmas?

Sir Bob said: "I just came back from Africa. I was with child witches in the Congo two days ago, and the telephone rang, and it was Gordon Brown. "He said to me: 'Ah, Bob, hello, what about the VAT on the record?' I said: 'Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. I forgot all that stuff.' "But they hadn't, because Gordon Brown and Tony Blair are the same sort of generation, so they're my age, and so I just had tea with them, as you do on a Sunday afternoon.

Geldof had vowed never to allow the event, staged in Wembley and Philadelphia, to be re-broadcast, arguing that it would be more powerful as a one-off memory.

But the increased trade in pirated copies of the show, and the onset of another famine crisis in sub-Saharan Africa made him change his mind.

He said: "The reason we've released this is to stop people buying bootleg copies. That was the initial reason. "I'm very excited that this has come out, but I couldn't believe the number of bootleg copies being sold - they are quite literally taking food from the hungry. This has to be stopped."