Finance Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Field]

I want to speak to new clause 3, although it might first be appropriate to pick up on one theme from the speech by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton). She said she was pleased that the Chancellor was creating a level playing field. Well, if there is any area of the country where it would be difficult to create level playing fields, it would be in Truro. But anyway, I am pleased that she is satisfied.

I wish to make a plea for a level playing field for young people in my constituency and other constituencies who go to sixth-form colleges, and I wish to compare their tax position with that of young people undertaking sixth-form studies in school. In a recent Westminster Hall debate, led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), we discussed how poorer young people in sixth-form colleges or similar establishments were discriminated against in respect of free school dinners compared with young people in school. Here is yet another example of discrimination against young people, depending on the institution they attend.

I plead again with the Government, in respect of VAT, to treat sixth-form colleges as we treat schools with sixth forms. In Birkenhead, most pupils have no option but to attend sixth-form college if they want to undertake post-16 studies because the sixth forms of most of the schools were pooled together in that one enterprise. The VAT on services that the college purchases, but which schools do not pay, adds £300,000 to the college budget—a reduction of 4% in that budget.

My plea to the Chancellor will be brief and simple;I will not go up and down the country lanes, visiting various constituents, bakers and so on. He hoped to create a level playing field for taxation for sixth-form colleges and sixth forms in schools by the end of the Parliament. That was a noble objective, but the 2015 election, as it draws ever nearer, will certainly concentrate Government Members’ minds not only on small U-turns but perhaps on more major ones.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies undertook an analysis of the Government’s public expenditure changes which showed that the part of the education system that will be most handicapped and suffer the largest cuts by 2015 will be colleges of further education. Indeed, they will experience a 20% real-terms cut in their budgets by 2015. I know that it would not be in order to ask the Minister to respond to that, but given that the Government’s policies are making the playing field even more unequal for sixth-form colleges, compared with the treatment of sixth forms in schools, let me make a plea for him to concede that point and exempt sixth-form colleges, whose students are of an age that if they were not at college, they would be in school.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I do not understand why this has ever occurred. How come a sixth-form college is not treated exactly the same as a sixth form in a normal school? They may be in different areas, but they are essentially the same kids. I do not understand it, so perhaps the right hon. Gentleman—my friend, because I have known him a very long time—can tell me the answer.

[Mr Field]

I am grateful for the intervention. Unfortunately I cannot give an answer, but I will redirect the question to the Minister. This time, I hope that he will give us an answer and—I hope even more—say that the Government intend to take action.