Private school VAT raid hurts less well off, Starmer told

Thousands of working parents back campaign against Labour’s plans to hit them with 20pc tax

PARENTS who send their children to private schools have told Sir Keir Starmer they are “not wealthy” as they launch a campaign against his VAT raid.

Thousands have pledged support for a parent-led protest against Labour’s plans to add 20 per cent VAT to school fees if it wins the next general election.

The action plan will call on Labour to listen to the concerns of working families who will be hit by the policy.

Tony Perry, 46, an NHS data analyst, is to launch the campaign today with dozens of parents at LVS Ascot, a private school in Berkshire that charges about £15,000 a year for junior day pupils.

Mr Perry, a father of two, has an eight-year-old daughter in state education but moved his son Norman, 10, to LVS Ascot because he has ADHD and dyslexia, and was falling behind at state school. He said: “His state school did their best but he was still falling behind, so we felt we needed to make this choice to help him catch up. We have seen him transform.”

Mr Perry, who earns about £60,000 a year, said: “As a non-wealthy parent sending a child to private school, I am disappointed by Labour’s determination to charge VAT on private school fees. Charging VAT won’t hurt the wealthy students attending public schools like Winchester, where Mr [Rishi] Sunak studied.

“It will hurt many others, however. Before enacting such a policy, it would help to hear the voices of parents who choose, and often sacrifice, to send their child to private school.”

Parents backing the campaign include Sushma Gill, 44 and Ben Gill, 49, first-generation Indian immigrants from Hounslow, west London, who have sent their two daughters to a private school in Ealing. The couple, state-educated and “historically Labour voters”, own a recruitment agency.

They sent their children to a private school as “local state schools were not very good” but they did not want to move away from their community.

Mr Gill said that if Labour imposed VAT on fees, then “people like us who want to be in this area because of family connections, will have to move to places where there are grammar schools”.

He said that parents at schools such as Eton and Harrow might not be stung in the same way by a rise in fees as families coming from areas “of poverty”, who want a good education for their children without moving to a different borough and losing family and community connections.

Ed Verity, who runs a marketing consultancy and lives in Somerset with his wife, a family lawyer for the local council, and their four children, is also backing the campaign. The children go to Hazelgrove, a prep school that charges fees of up to £21,000 a year.

Mr Verity said: “The costs are already punitive. You’re paying very high fees in an inflationary environment, in a supercharged tax environment.”

He said that if fees went up by 20 per cent, they would try to sell anything they could to keep their children in private education. More than 50,000 people have signed his petition which states that “private schools aren’t simply playgrounds of the wealthy”, with many families making sacrifices to pay for their child’s education, including for pupils with special needs, a particular faith, or military families.

Mr Perry said: “I and other working parents would like to meet Rachel Reeves [the shadow chancellor]. Please listen to actual working parents who are going to be hurt by this.”

Labour has been sticking to its net zero approach while ditching or watering down other policies, which it thinks will antagonise the voters it needs to win across this year. But one policy being pursued relentlessly by Labour is the imposition of VAT on private school fees.

Sir Keir Starmer knows if he is to placate Leftwing misgivings over the party’s abandonment of other socialist nostrums, he must provide some red meat. This takes the form of yet another Labour attack on educational excellence to follow up its near destruction of the grammar schools.

Imposing VAT at 20 per cent and removing exemptions on business rates will jeopardise the future of many independent schools, especially smaller institutions unable to charge the fees of their larger brethren. Labour’s suggestion that schools can make savings to absorb the VAT rather than pass it on in fees is clearly disingenuous.

As we report today, a campaign is under way spearheaded by parents anxious to puncture the myth that these schools are the preserve of the super-wealthy. More than 50,000 people have signed a petition urging Labour to drop the policy.

Many of these schools are attended by the children of middle-class professionals who are already sacrificing much to pay fees that Labour would place beyond their affordability. This could force as many as 40,000 pupils into an already overstretched state sector.

Labour denies its policy is “an attack on private schools” but it is hard to see it as anything else. More than that, it is an assault on the aspirations of Middle England, whose votes the party is trying to win by claiming it is prepared to lower their taxes. By their actions shall they be judged.