School Fees: VAT

Debate between Lord Livermore and Lord Black of Brentwood

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I declare an interest as chairman of governors of Brentwood School and as president of the Institute of Boarding and the Boarding Schools’ Association.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)]

My Lords, the implication of imposing VAT on school fees with effect from 1 January 2025 will be to raise revenue to fund the Government’s objective that every child has access to high-quality education, including the 94% of children who are educated in the state sector. It will help to fund 3,000 new nurseries, the rolling out of breakfast clubs to all primary schools and the recruitment of 6,500 new teachers.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

As the noble Lord is a distinguished economist, must he not acknowledge that the impact on state schools of this vindictive policy will be meaningless, with 6,500 extra teachers across 20,000 schools in England adding just one-third of one teacher to each school? Yet the impact on children at independent schools will be enormous, with the losers being those who have to leave half way through the year because their parents cannot afford to pay, the children of service families who rely on boarding schools so that their parents can defend us, and children with special needs who are exceptionally vulnerable. Their lives will be upended for nothing—all pain and no gain. The Prime Minister accepted £20,000 in free accommodation to ensure that his son’s schooling was not interrupted and talks about party before country. Why will he not extend that courtesy to other children and put them before party, and either scrap or delay this shambolic, shameful policy?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I do not accept in any way the noble Lord’s characterisation of this policy. This is a necessary decision that will generate additional funding to help improve public services, including the Government’s commitments relating to education and young people. As far as the state sector goes, to the extent that pupils move at all, the number of pupils who may switch schools represents a very small proportion of overall pupil numbers in the state sector and is likely to be less than 0.5% of total UK school pupils, of whom there are more than 9 million.