Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief

Aphra Brandreth Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for his introduction to the petition today.

I have considerable sympathy with the petitioners. I know that families make the choice to send their children to a private school for many reasons. I have been contacted by constituents who felt that their children’s needs were not being met in local state schools, and that they had no choice but to go private. I know, too, that families make sacrifices to be able to afford fees. I have been contacted by families who send their children to St Columba’s junior and senior schools in Kilmacolm in the neighbouring constituency to mine. I know that the new VAT measures, combined with other costs, have led to a 20% increase in school fees from the beginning of 2025, and that is difficult for the families and for the school. I also appreciate that for some families, and not just the 50 or so signatories to the petition in my constituency, the speed with which this measure was introduced has been difficult.

I am encouraged by the extent to which schools have been able to offset VAT on capital charges against input VAT, to make the effective increase lower than the 20%, but it is clear that other pressures have made the increase in school fees necessary. I am aware that school fees have been increasing year on year in any event, so not all of the increase is down to VAT.

Ultimately, government is about making choices. This Government were elected on a clear manifesto commitment to introduce VAT on private school fees. The express intention was to use the revenue raised to improve funding for schools in the state sector. In England, the Government have been setting out plans for school rebuilding, introducing breakfast clubs, supporting school attendance and recruiting new teachers, all of which will help to build up the state sector and give pupils in England the best chance of a foundational education that has the capacity fundamentally to change the trajectory of children’s lives.

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

The UK is now the only country in Europe to tax education. Does the hon. Member recognise that this policy is about Labour’s ideology and not about improving education for all children across our country, irrespective of whether they are in the state sector or the independent sector?

[Alison Taylor]

I simply do not agree. I refer to my earlier point that this policy was in Labour’s manifesto in 2017, 2019 and 2024. It is a long-standing policy of the Labour party.