VAT: Independent Schools
Kit Malthouse Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend is correct: substantial export earnings come from the sector, and from a globally mobile set of families. But I would go further; in addition to the direct export earnings effect, there is also an indirect effect. For companies deciding where to site their European headquarters, English education is a big factor. That is partly because of our brilliant state schools, which have improved so much over the past 14 years, but the availability of independent schools is also a factor.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
The shadow Secretary of State makes a strong point about the sanctity of zero-rating VAT for education. I am concerned that children’s clothes, which are currently exempt from VAT, may be the next target. Notwithstanding the impact that the change to VAT will have on individual families, does he agree that private and prep schools—my constituency has five—are enormous employers of people involved in building maintenance, such as electricians and plumbers, and that the impact on the wider economy could well be profound?
Mr Speaker
Order. I remind Members to look towards the Chair when they are speaking, or what they say will not be picked up by the mics; I then struggle to hear them. I know that the Minister was struggling as well. If Members keep the chatter down, it will help us both.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
I thank the Opposition for bringing forward the debate. While the focus has been on private schools and the implications of the planned tax changes, it has allowed us to consider what is important in education. It is important to support the aspirations of all young people and their parents, and it is essential that all young people receive a good education in a safe and supportive environment.
It is certainly true that many parents choose to seek that provision in the private sector. The Government will always support their right to choose where to educate their children, but most parents do not have that choice, and all parents have high aspirations for their children. We therefore need to prioritise our efforts and consider how we can better serve the 94% of children in our state-funded schools.
Ending the tax breaks on VAT and business rates for private schools is a necessary decision to drive high and rising standards across our state schools and give every young person the best start in life. It will generate additional funding to help improve public services, including the Government’s commitments relating to children and young people.
This money will allow the Government to expand early years childcare for all by opening 3,000 new nurseries, thus helping parents back to work. The Government will recruit 6,500 new teachers and improve teacher and headteacher training as part of restoring teaching to the career of choice for the very best graduates. The Treasury is of course responsible for tax policy and has led on the publication of the draft legislation and technical consultation since July. As the Exchequer Secretary set out, VAT will apply to tuition and boarding fees charged by private schools for terms starting on or after 1 January 2025. It is right that we end tax breaks as soon as possible to raise the funding needed to deliver those educational priorities. The Treasury is assessing the impact of these changes in advance of the Budget. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility will certify the Government’s costings for these measures at the Budget and that will also include the interaction with other VAT receipts.
Stephen Morgan
I am going to make some progress. The right hon. Gentleman spoke earlier. I know that many Members are concerned about children with SEND. [Interruption.] Members can shout as much as they like, but I have some really important points to make about SEND. I know I speak for the country—the right hon. Gentleman certainly does not. I assure Members that the Treasury has sought to ensure that these changes do not disadvantage pupils who need provision that is unavailable in the state sector.
Let me be clear: pupils who need a local authority-funded place in a private school, including those with a local authority-funded EHCP, will not be affected by the changes. That is because local authorities are able to reclaim VAT when they are charged. For other pupils, this change should not mean that they will automatically face 20% higher fees. The Government expect private schools to take steps to minimise fee increases, including through reclaiming VAT incurred in supplying education and boarding. I also note that IFS analysis shows that the number of children in private schools has remained steady despite a 20% real-terms increase in average private school fees since 2020 and a 55% rise since 2003.
Members from both sides of the House mentioned transfers to the state-funded sector. There are always some pupils moving between the private and state-funded school sectors. Approximately 50 maintained private schools close every year, for a range of reasons. Where schools do close, pupils may transfer to another private school or move into the state sector. We simply do not accept, in the case of recent closures, that this has had any connection to our policy on VAT. Quite simply, the evidence does not bear that out. The number of pupils who might switch following these changes represents a very small proportion of overall pupil numbers in the state sector. Any displacement is likely to take place over several years, and will mostly come from parents choosing not to place their children in the private sector to begin with, rather than children leaving the private sector. All children of compulsory school age are entitled to a state-funded school place if they need one. I understand that moving schools can be a challenging experience, and local authorities and schools already have processes to support pupils moving between schools.
A number of Members also raised concerns about capacity. There are always a range of pressures on state-funded school places, and the Department for Education works to support local authorities to ensure that every local area has sufficient places for children who need them. That is business as usual and local authorities and schools already have a range of options to increase capacity where it is needed. We are confident that the state sector will be able to accommodate any additional pupils and that there will not be a significant impact on state education as a whole.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) on her maiden speech. I know she will be a real champion for children and young people in her community. I also welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) back to this place and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (John Grady) on his maiden speech—he spoke eloquently and with passion about his constituency and the needs of his constituents. It was also a real pleasure to hear the maiden speech from the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson), who described so well his beautiful constituency, a place I enjoyed holidaying in as a child. I look forward to working with him on issues affecting the Solent region. My hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) gave an excellent maiden speech. It was evident that she will be a strong voice in this place, nationally and for her community. I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on his maiden speech, and I wish him well on his unexpected new role in this place and on delivering opportunity for all.
The hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) and others mentioned military families; I know that colleagues in the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office will closely monitor the impact on affected military families, considering support via the continuity of education allowance scheme. Small faith schools were raised by a few Members; those schools meet the needs of dedicated faith communities, often at low cost. I know that Treasury colleagues have met representatives from those schools to ensure fairness. A number of right hon. and hon. Members spoke about the impact assessment. As my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury set out, we are considering the impact of the policies and will publish a tax information and impact note at the Budget in the usual way.
In conclusion, this Government were elected to deliver change across our country, not least in our schools. Our mission to break down the barriers to opportunity is exactly what our country needs. This party is showing that education is once again at the forefront of national life. I urge Members across the House to demonstrate that by voting against the motion.
Question put.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Winter Fuel Payment
Kit Malthouse Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
James Murray
I am going to make some progress.
The Opposition did not like to be reminded of their legacy when they were in government, but let us have a look, shall we? What do they have to show for their years of reckless overspending? A failed asylum system, prisons at breaking point, more than 1 million people waiting for council homes, 4 million children growing up in poverty, and more than 7.5 million people on NHS waiting lists. This Government and every Member of this House who stood on my party’s manifesto were elected to turn things around.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
Yesterday, in the other place, the Transport Minister cast doubt on the continuation of travel concessions for pensioners, which has caused significant alarm in my constituency and others. Notwithstanding the discussion we are having today, could the Minister reassure us that travel concessions for pensioners will continue under a Labour Government?
James Murray
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The Chancellor will take all decisions in the Budget on 30 October—[Interruption.] Let me make one important point to him as we approach the Budget on 30 October: we know there are going to be difficult decisions that we have to take in the Budget and, frankly, that is a direct consequence of the decisions taken by him and his colleagues when they were in government.
Public Spending: Inheritance
Kit Malthouse Excerpts(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is right. The people of Rother Valley will be shocked and appalled by the gross mismanagement of public finances, including a £6.4 billion overspend on asylum. That is why we are getting a grip on the public finances and public spending to put them on a firmer footing.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I congratulate you on your ascension, Madam Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Lady says she is keen on transparency. Can she confirm to the House that she had extensive access talks with senior civil servants in the Treasury in the run-up to the general election? It might be helpful, for transparency purposes, if she could lay the minutes of those meetings in the House of Commons for the rest of the House to understand. I am also concerned about the issue of misleading estimates being laid before the House. May I suggest, for the elucidation of Members, that she asks the permanent secretary at the Treasury, and the permanent secretaries of those Departments impacted by the decisions she has made today, to confirm to the House in writing that none of the information that should have been in the estimates was not included—if they were correct, was it included?—so we can see for ourselves whether she is covering up?
Rachel Reeves
The cover-up was from those on the Opposition Benches. The sooner we get an apology to the British people, the better.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
The hon. Member will know that the Chair is not responsible for the content of contributions made by Ministers, but I am sure that his concern has been heard on the Government Benches. I am sure that if an error has been made in this instance, the Minister will seek to correct it as quickly as possible. It is for the Government to decide on the estimates that they put before the House.
Kit Malthouse
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made certain assertions about timing during her statement. However, we know from the media that the contents of the statement were briefed to The Guardian at 8.58 pm on Thursday, just after the estimates had been voted on. While I understand that the Chair is not responsible for the content of what is said at the Dispatch Box, the Chair is responsible for the integrity of documents that are laid before the House and on which we vote and rely. May I ask whether this is a matter for the Prime Minister in his governance of the ministerial code, or for the Commissioner for Standards in his upholding of standards in the House? Prima facie, in the absence of any evidence from the Chancellor, it looks as if we have all been misled.
Madam Deputy Speaker
The right hon. Member will know as well as I do that that is not for the Chair to decide. It is for the Government to decide what they put in their estimates and in documents that are published.
Economy, Welfare and Public Services
Kit Malthouse Excerpts(4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rachel Reeves
I have been compared to a lot of things, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have never been compared to Joseph Stalin.
Our approach is a brownfield-first approach. We will reintroduce those mandatory targets; of course it is up to local authorities and local communities to decide where the housing should be built, but the answer cannot always be no. If the answer is always no, we will continue as we are, with home ownership declining and mortgages and rents going through the roof. On the Government side of the House, we are not willing to tolerate that.
This King’s Speech shows that we are getting to work. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out, our programme for government is founded on principles of security, fairness and opportunity. Our No. 1 mission is to secure sustained economic growth in our great country through a new partnership between Government, business and working people that prioritises wealth creation for all of our communities.
We will fix the foundations of our economy so we can rebuild Britain and make every part of our country better off. There are a number of important pieces of legislation in the King’s Speech that will help us to grow the economy. In this speech, I will focus on three in particular: the Budget Responsibility Bill to restore economic stability, the national wealth fund Bill to drive investments and the pension schemes Bill to reform our economy. Those Bills speak not just to our programme for government, but also to trust in politics. They show that we will govern as we campaigned and that we will meet our promises to the British people.
In the election campaign, I said the first step we would take would be to restore economic stability, because stability is the precondition to a healthy, growing economy. It is how we keep taxes, inflation and mortgages as low as possible. After years of irresponsibility, we are putting our economy on firm ground once again. We introduced the new Budget Responsibility Bill on Thursday to deliver on our manifesto commitment to introduce a fiscal lock so that I can keep an iron grip on our country’s finances.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
The Chancellor and I sat on the Treasury Committee together many years ago, and she will know from our time together that economics is as much art as it is science. Given that she is effectively giving a veto over economic policy to the OBR through this Bill, she must recognise that we need to understand what the people in the OBR believe, what their theories of economics are and what principles they attach themselves to. What further scrutiny of the chair of the OBR and the people doing the forecast will be available to this House, given that effectively they will be co-Chancellor with her during the next few years?
Rachel Reeves
The Treasury Committee, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, can call in the chair and other members of the Office for Budget Responsibility, but his comments show exactly why we need this Bill: so that never again can we have a repeat of the mini Budget. The Bill will require every announcement that makes significant permanent changes to tax and spending to be subject to an independent assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Why? Because unfunded, reckless commitments do not just threaten our public finances; they threaten people’s incomes and they threaten people’s mortgages. We saw that in the wake of the mini-Budget presided over by the former Member for South West Norfolk. I understand that she has taken umbrage in recent days at the idea that that episode was disastrous. Well, if any Conservative Member would like to dispute that fact today, I would be more than happy to give way. [Hon. Members: “Come on then!”] They cheered it at the time, but they are not cheering it now, and I do not imagine that they would put it on their leaflets.
The Conservatives should be ashamed of what they did because people up and down the country are still paying the price for the chaos that they caused. We say: never again. The Budget Responsibility Bill will enshrine that commitment in law.
Rachel Reeves
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. One of the biggest challenges people face with getting a mortgage is building up the deposit. That is why we have committed to a mortgage guarantee scheme, to help those people who cannot rely on the bank of mum and dad to get on the housing ladder. That is a really important commitment, as is our commitment to build the homes: unless we build more homes, home ownership will continue to go backwards, as it did over the past few years.
Alongside stability and investment in our economy must come reform, because delivering economic growth requires tough choices. It means taking on vested interests and confronting issues that politicians have too often avoided. The last Government refused to engage with those choices, and refused to level with the British people about what was required. This Government will be different. We have already demonstrated that through a series of reforms to our planning system, and are bringing forward further legislation in the King’s Speech to get Britain building.
Today, I want to focus on another area of our economy where reform is vital: our pension schemes. People across our country work hard to save for the future; they want a better, more secure retirement with the most generous pension possible. At the same time, British businesses with high growth potential need capital to support their expansion. Pension funds are at the heart of this. There will soon be over £800 billion of assets in defined contribution pension schemes, but for too long, those assets have not been targeted towards UK markets. That has impacted British savers, and it has impacted British business.
The last Government also said that this was a problem, and I welcome that acknowledgement, but they never introduced the legislation needed to make the change. We believe in deeds, not words, so we will strengthen investment from private pension providers by bringing forward the pension schemes Bill in the King’s Speech. It will boost pension pots by over £11,000 through a new and improved value for money framework. Through an investment shift in DC schemes, just a 1% shift in asset allocation could deliver £8 billion of new productive investment into the UK economy.
To ensure that the Bill is as strong as possible, I am today launching a pensions investment review, led by the first ever joint Commons Minister appointed between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions—my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds), the Pensions Minister. This will include a review of the local government pension scheme, the seventh largest pension fund in the world, to ensure it is getting the best value from the savings of nearly 7 million public sector workers, the majority of whom are women and the majority of whom are low-paid. They deserve a pension that is working for them. Together, these reforms will kick-start economic growth by unlocking investment that has been tied up for too long.