Independent Schools: VAT Exemption

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Boarding Schools’ Association and the Institute of Boarding. This is an intensely personal issue for me. My beloved parents sent my brother and me to Brentwood School, an independent school. They were not at all wealthy—my father owned a shoe shop and my mother looked after the family. It was a real struggle for them, but they never regretted it. To their sacrifice, and an exceptional education at Brentwood, I owe everything. My parents were just the sort of people, battling to make ends meet to pay the fees, who would have been hit hardest by this spiteful policy. They would not have been able to cope with a sudden 20% increase, especially halfway through the school year, and we would have been placed in a state school, adding to their overcrowded classrooms. That is what will happen now—one of many reasons why this policy will end up costing taxpayers money. This truly is voodoo economics. Those affected will be young people at their most vulnerable. They are not statistics, but children with whose lives this Government are heartlessly toying.

Fifty years on, I am chairman of governors at the school, and I declare my interest accordingly. Abundantly fulfilling our charitable purposes, we play our full part in helping many from less well-off backgrounds. We spend nearly £2.5 million each year on over 120 bursaries, half of which are fully funded. We have an active programme of partnerships and volunteer programmes with the local community, and we work with many local state schools to provide sporting, musical and science facilities, as well as donating laptops. That is replicated across the sector. However, all that is at risk if VAT, alongside the removal of business rates relief, hits the financial sustainability of independent schools.

A prime duty of government in education policy should be to encourage excellence access—hallmarks of schools such as Brentwood. This policy does the opposite: it is a tax on opportunity and achievement. If I dare use this phrase, it is the first time in five decades that a Government have had levelling down as an aim of education policy, rather than levelling up.

Brentwood is also a boarding school. Boarding schools, both state and independent, are a vital part of the education sector, contributing £3 billion a year to the economy and providing 64,000 jobs, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said. They educate 70,000 children a year, with 25,000 coming from overseas, making them part of the incredible international success story of independent education. They play a particularly important role in training young people in music, singing and ballet. As such, they are a crucial part of the UK’s creative economy, especially at a time when music education is collapsing in state schools. They also provide indispensable continuity of education for military families, on whom we depend for our freedoms. The Government say that will not charge VAT on state boarding fees but will on independent boarding fees. Why on earth should they be treated differently, if not simply for ideological reasons? Should not fees for military families, and for students enrolled in music and dance schemes, be exempt, in the interests of wider public policy and at a cost of just a few million pounds?

This cruel policy—in sharp contradiction, I might say, of our obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—shamefully puts the interests of crude ideology before those of children, many with special needs. The Government must delay its implementation until September 2025, undertake a proper consultation, talk to the sector and come back with plans that are properly thought through, costed and practical. It is time to put children before party.