Freemasons in Wiltshire have backed their national organisation in giving an emergency grant of £50,000 to the British Red Cross to provide hygiene kits for 8,500 families in the typhoon-hit Phillipines.

Philip Bullock, spokesman for Wiltshire Freemasons, said: “What makes this appeal more urgent is that unlike the disaster in Japan, the Philippines is a much poorer nation and responding to this disaster is a massive strain on their limited resources.”