Why not make private school fees tax deductible?

It would achieve a double whammy of improving parents’ right to choose and freeing up public services for those who need them

For all the sound and fury of modern British politics, it has sometimes become difficult to discern the principal differences between government and opposition front benches. Much of the ill-fated Truss-Kwarteng mini-Budget was initially supported by Labour. The Tories then U-turned back towards a strategy of higher taxes and collapsed their own government. The opposition apparently then broadly embraced this change of direction too.

In recent days though, we have seen a clash between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer which might just indicate a major difference in their approach to state and private provisions of public services – at least when it comes to schooling. The Labour leader has pledged to end charitable status for private schools and, among other burdens, parents would see VAT added to school fees. The Prime Minister sees this as an attack on opportunity and has refused to signal any embarrassment at having being educated at the exceptional Winchester College. Rishi Sunak is right to pursue this line of argument, but he could do with being considerably more robust.

It shouldn’t be difficult, or novel, to make the argument in favour of aspiration. A core reason for striving to develop your career and to increase your earnings is to be able to afford the things which are of value to you, and educational opportunities for your children are likely to feature highly on this list. Sunak seems to grasp that just because certain services are not within the reach of most households, this is not a reason to deny opportunities to those who can afford them.

But the justification for private schools being treated as charities isn’t simply to give a gentle nudge in favour of enhanced educational outcomes. A central plank of much charitable activity can be understood as the provision of services which would otherwise have to be provided by the state.

With such vast swathes of public services creaking to the point of collapse, it would be welcome to see those finding private alternatives not merely as exercising their own right to choose, but also as discharging some sort of moral obligation. If you can afford better services than the government provides, it isn’t merely a case of you improving your own family’s lives and opportunities, but you are also helpfully getting out of the state-administered queue.

More than 600,000 pupils currently attend British private schools and the overwhelming majority of them would be entitled to places at state sector schools. Depending on how many private schools collapse if stripped of their charitable standing, and on how many parents could not afford increased

Rather than merely defending the status quo, we should be finding ways to make self-reliance more financially attractive

fees, the enhanced burden on state schooling could be vast.

We surely want more people to provide for themselves without state support, not fewer? That requires carrots, not just sticks.

We would obviously still expect the affluent to contribute meaningfully to the general tax take, but to incentivise more of them to stand on their own feet, there should be tax advantages for doing so. Rather than merely defending the status quo, we should be finding ways to make self-reliance more financially attractive.

Tax deductions for schooling fees, and for other services such as private healthcare, wouldn’t just underscore a commitment to free choice but would ensure millions more could actually afford to exercise such choices.