Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Exemptions Debate
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Robin Swann
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Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Exemptions
Robin Swann Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
I thank the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) for securing this debate. I want to bring up a specific Northern Ireland and constituency-based concern. When the addition of VAT to special schools was first proposed, I was contacted by the administrator of Newtownabbey Independent Christian school. I want to quote what he informed me:
“We receive no revenue or capital funding from the Department of Education to run our school therefore our parents have no choice but to pay fees when, out of religious conviction, they chose to send their children to our school. We are not an elite school, nor do we practise academic selection in any form. We believe this policy lacks fairness. Some of our school parents are on low incomes, demonstrated by pupils being entitled to free school meals. An added cost of 20% will deprive them of their religious based choice to send them to a Christian School.”
That is important not only in a Northern Ireland context, but in the context of this Government’s intention to add VAT to independent school fees, because under section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, public authorities must
“have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity”.
Adding this VAT fee to a religious-based school deprives the protected characteristic of religious belief. The administrator also believes that the addition of VAT may well be an infringement of parents’ religious freedom and liberty. Article 2, protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights states:
“No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”
Dame Caroline Dinenage (in the Chair)
Order. We have to move on to the next speaker.