VAT: Independent Schools

Laurence Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow so many excellent maiden speeches today. I am glad to have this opportunity to talk about schools and education because there is no doubt that schools face very real funding constraints. In my constituency, there are state schools that have been forced to let staff go because the funding just is not there. The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates that, after school-specific inflation has been deducted, per-pupil funding rose by 0.7% in primary schools over the last 14 years and that spending shrank by 0.5% in secondaries. That compares to real increases of between 5% and 6% over the preceding 13 years.

Figures released in response to a written parliamentary question show that over the last five years, per-pupil funding in Birmingham grew less fast than in the west midlands and across England as a whole. In fact, while per-pupil spending will have risen by just under 21% between 2020-21 and 2024-25, CPI inflation will have increased by about 24.5%. In other words, this is a real-terms cut of around 3%, or a loss of around £179 for each child. Some of the schools in my constituency have some of the highest pupil premium rates in the country. These are not just statistics; they represent a loss of opportunity, a loss of skilled and dedicated staff, and the overcrowded classrooms that flow from that.

At this point I draw the House’s attention to my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my background as an officer of the GMB, one of the unions that represents school support staff.

There is much for schools and parents to welcome in this Government’s approach, including ending single-word inspection judgments, funding free breakfast clubs, reusing space from falling pupil numbers to create new early-years provision, committing to a new child poverty reduction strategy—the first since the Child Poverty Act 2010 was repealed—and reinstating the school support staff negotiating body. It has been welcome in this debate to hear the concern for school support staff roles in the independent sector. I am sure that will extend to the state sector and I hope that we will see cross-party support for that measure.

I want to make a point around SEND. The motion would exempt all children on SEND support from the VAT policy, but SEND support status is determined within schools, and schools in the independent sector do not have the same budgetary restrictions as state schools, which are obliged to set aside nominal SEND budgets. There is a real risk of creating false incentives, as the “Today” programme’s 2017 investigation demonstrated. Ours is the right policy, and this is the wrong motion. I look forward to voting against it later today.