DOMINIC LAWSON: Sir Keir Starmer's tax on private school fees is a sordid strategy to throw red meat to Corbynistas - and proves he's still a class warrior at heart
Prepare to be driven to distraction by the deliberate vagueness of Sir Keir Starmer when, over the next weeks of the election campaign, he is asked how, exactly, a Labour government will meet its promise to 'change' the country.
But in an otherwise narcoleptic interview with the BBC's Mishal Husain last week, the Labour leader made one hard commitment: charging 20 per cent VAT on school fees in the independent sector would be 'a day one priority'.
Or as Starmer described it: 'Ending tax breaks for private schools so we can have [an extra] 6,500 [state school] teachers.'
But the fact that VAT has never been applied to the fees paid by families for their children's education is not a 'tax break'. Across what is sometimes termed 'the civilised world', it has been understood that as education is a public good, it should not be subject to this form of taxation. This is a principle held not just across Europe, but also the US and Australia. For the same reason, VAT is not charged on university fees.
Threat
I am old enough to remember that when bidding for his party's leadership in 2020, Sir Keir said he would 'build on' Jeremy Corbyn's legacy, and that 'we should treat the 2017 manifesto as a foundational document'.
![In an otherwise narcoleptic interview with the BBC 's Mishal Husain last week, the Labour leader made one hard commitment: charging 20 per cent VAT on school fees in the independent sector would be 'a day one priority', writes Dominic Lawson](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/05/26/23/85360963-13462087-image-m-5_1716762344582.jpg)
In an otherwise narcoleptic interview with the BBC 's Mishal Husain last week, the Labour leader made one hard commitment: charging 20 per cent VAT on school fees in the independent sector would be 'a day one priority', writes Dominic Lawson
![It is not the 'super-rich' who will find an extra 20 per cent cost very hard to cover. Nor will the policy be much of a problem for schools such as Eton (pictured), and indeed Winchester, supported as they are by very large endowments](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/05/26/23/85360977-13462087-image-a-6_1716762351999.jpg)
It is not the 'super-rich' who will find an extra 20 per cent cost very hard to cover. Nor will the policy be much of a problem for schools such as Eton (pictured), and indeed Winchester, supported as they are by very large endowments
The threat to apply VAT to school fees was in both of Labour's manifestos under Corbyn — a long-standing demand from the Left of the party, but which had never been indulged by Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.
In Starmer's eyes, this 'legacy' from the man he caused to be expelled from the Labour Party has one very specific political purpose. It is designed to remind voters that Rishi Sunak was sent by his parents to Winchester College (which now charges almost £52,000 a year for boarding pupils), and that the PM had made a six-figure donation to his ancient alma mater.
Yet Starmer was himself the beneficiary of a bursary, which enabled him to continue to attend Reigate Grammar School when it went independent.
The current head of that school, Shaun Fenton, says of the policy now adopted by its most well-known ex-pupil: 'Attacking independent schools won't help . . . I would support an increase in state school funding, but this proposal may not raise any money at all, with the movement of many families out of the independent sector, back to being educated at the cost of the taxpayer in the state sector.'
Mr Fenton is right. Labour's implausible claim is that, faced with a 20 per cent extra charge, no parents will withdraw children currently in independent schools, and that it will not even cause a decline in future applications.
On that basis, the party boasts that it will raise an extra £1.7 billion a year, which it would use to fund the 'extra' 6,500 teachers in the state sector. (By the way, even this would pay for less than one-third of a teacher per school, given there are 25,000 state schools.)
I have spoken to one headmaster who is budgeting for a 20 per cent drop in applications — this is actually starting to happen — and he says that other heads talk of an even steeper attrition rate.
The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) produced a paper which demonstrated that if there were a 25 per cent decline, and equivalent 'migration' into the maintained sector, this would actually cost the Treasury £1.6 billion a year.
Which means, given Labour's claims that all of its spending commitments will be 'fully funded', it would have to raise additional taxes elsewhere to fund the 'extra 6,500 teachers'.
Overwhelmed
The ASI also noted: 'In 2015, Greece applied 23 per cent VAT on independent school fees. Schools closed [and] the state sector was overwhelmed.'
Bridget Phillipson, Labour's Shadow Education Secretary, makes it clear where she is coming from, describing the policy as part of 'ending tax advantages for the super-rich'.
Yet it is not the 'super-rich' who will find an extra 20 per cent cost very hard to cover. Nor will the policy be much of a problem for schools such as Eton, and indeed Winchester, supported as they are by very large endowments.
Despite the caricature presented by the likes of Phillipson, the grand old all-male boarding schools, such as Eton, are absolutely not typical of the independent sector.
![I am old enough to remember that when bidding for his party's leadership in 2020, Sir Keir said he would 'build on' Jeremy Corbyn 's legacy, and that 'we should treat the 2017 manifesto as a foundational document' (pictured: Sir Keir Starmer and Corbyn in 2019)](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/05/26/23/85360985-13462087-image-a-8_1716762363079.jpg)
I am old enough to remember that when bidding for his party's leadership in 2020, Sir Keir said he would 'build on' Jeremy Corbyn 's legacy, and that 'we should treat the 2017 manifesto as a foundational document' (pictured: Sir Keir Starmer and Corbyn in 2019)
The great majority of private schools are co-educational day schools, on average charging around £15,000 a year. And they need to be good because, as the head teacher of one such school told me: 'We are competing with free.'
He fears that in order to keep his school solvent, in the wake of an exodus, he — and others in his position — would need to cut back on bursaries for families with gifted children who can't afford the fees. Those like Keir Starmer's parents, in other words.
And what of the more than 100,000 children who attend special schools in the private sector but who do not, at the moment, receive state funding under the category of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)?
![Lord (Alistair) Lexden, the President of the Independent Schools Association, declared in the House of Lords last month: 'How on earth would the state sector cope with the large number of special needs students in independent schools who would be forced to leave them, with grave damage to their education, by Labour's education tax?'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/05/27/08/85375417-13462087-Lord_Alistair_Lexden_the_President_of_the_Independent_Schools_As-a-2_1716795242668.jpg)
Lord (Alistair) Lexden, the President of the Independent Schools Association, declared in the House of Lords last month: 'How on earth would the state sector cope with the large number of special needs students in independent schools who would be forced to leave them, with grave damage to their education, by Labour's education tax?'
The Labour Party insists that its 20 per cent VAT charge will not affect pupils with special educational needs whose places at such independent establishments are state-funded via Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP). But of the 111,154 pupils at special schools in the private sector, just 7,646 are under the EHCP umbrella.
Exodus
I have a certain knowledge of these matters, as our younger daughter has Down's syndrome. She was educated in the state sector, in a secondary school which made a special effort to take on children with the condition, and was given extra subsidies via EHCP (funding speech therapy, for example).
Yet the state sector is far from well-placed to do this on a much larger scale, as will be necessary if there is a significant 'migration' from private special schools whose parents, already financially on the edge, cannot absorb a sudden government tax charge of 20 per cent.
Sue Peacock, a consultant in the field of special educational needs, told the i newspaper this month that 'most of the parents who I know are already struggling to meet the fees', and had only turned to the private sector often 'out of desperation' because their children had been unhappy, or worse, in mainstream schools.
As Lord (Alistair) Lexden, the President of the Independent Schools Association, declared in the House of Lords last month: 'How on earth would the state sector cope with the large number of special needs students in independent schools who would be forced to leave them, with grave damage to their education, by Labour's education tax?'
![In Starmer's eyes, this 'legacy' from the man he caused to be expelled from the Labour Party has one very specific political purpose. It is designed to remind voters that Rishi Sunak was sent by his parents to Winchester College](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/05/26/23/85360999-13462087-image-a-9_1716762368147.jpg)
In Starmer's eyes, this 'legacy' from the man he caused to be expelled from the Labour Party has one very specific political purpose. It is designed to remind voters that Rishi Sunak was sent by his parents to Winchester College
![Bridget Phillipson, Labour's Shadow Education Secretary, makes it clear where she is coming from, describing the policy as part of 'ending tax advantages for the super-rich'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/05/26/23/85361051-13462087-image-a-10_1716762371845.jpg)
Bridget Phillipson, Labour's Shadow Education Secretary, makes it clear where she is coming from, describing the policy as part of 'ending tax advantages for the super-rich'
Yes it is, or will be, an education tax.
And there are many other ways in which Labour could fund '6,500 extra state school teachers' — for example by marginal tweaks to capital gains tax — if it wanted to avoid increasing the burden on what it always calls 'ordinary working people'.
But, instead, Sir Keir has chosen a method designed to offer socialist red meat to Left-wing party members requiring appeasement following the expulsion of their beloved Jeremy Corbyn. What a sordid stratagem.