Two politicians at the opposite ends of the spectrum of thinking – Michael Gove, former Education Secretary, and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party – have come together on a plan to “soak the rich”.
Writing in The Times (Put VAT on school fees and soak the rich) on 24 February 2017 Gove pointed to “group of highly successful enterprises that is pretty much insulated from the present row about business rates” – private schools – because they are charities. Because private schools are VAT-exempt, writes Gove, “the wealthiest in this country” are able “to buy a prestige service that secures their children a permanent, positional edge in society at an effective 20% discount”.
Turning to the knotty issue of the number of scholarships and bursaries these schools provide, he criticises (with a rhetorical question) the small number of students given educational opportunities from depressed areas of the country such as Knowsley, Sunderland, Merthyr Tydfil and Blyth Valley.
Two months later, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader, and the Shadow Education Secretary, Angela Rayner, came up with a not dissimilar proposal to charge parents VAT on the fees they pay to private schools, with a view to using the income to offer free meals to all children in primary schools.
Rayner told the BBC: “There are many private businesses that are paying VAT that are struggling. I don’t see why the state school system should subsidise the private sector.”
She added: “The evidence from the National Centre for Social Research (NCSR) and the IFS (the Institute of Fiscal Studies) have both been quite clear that actually providing universal school meals at primary level will raise attainment.”
She was backed by Labour’s headquarters which claimed that research had shown that access to free school meals improved educational attainment by two months.
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