Lord Bilimoria
Main Page: Lord Bilimoria (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Bilimoria's debates with the Department for Education
Independent Schools: VAT
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, this is intended to raise £1.3 billion to get 6,500 more teachers, yet we have 7% of children in private schools. I am a governor of Wellington College and a president of BAISIS. An estimated loss of 135,000 pupils would mean that we lost £1.58 billion not raise £1.3 billion, even if 15% to 25% of pupils moved to state schools. What about the 80% business rate discount being removed? That is so unfair. Will special needs children be exempt from this and continue to get help? Will Armed Forces children continue to get help?
We have a state school budget of £60 billion. Trying to save £1.3 billion when we actually end up losing £1.6 billion is not just a false economy; it is foolish. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Who thought of this? This is the politics of envy. We should be rising all the boats.