Baroness Barran (Con)

My Lords, Amendment 65 is a probing amendment to understand the Government’s thinking in relation to faith schools. As we have heard on numerous occasions in Committee, our concerns about the financial viability of the sector relate to the combination of VAT, the potential increase in employers’ national insurance contributions and now business rates. This combination is potentially most acute for faith schools, for three main reasons. First, as the noble Lord knows, they often charge lower fees than other independent schools and have less financial resilience. This is particularly true for some Muslim and Jewish schools. Secondly, for parents where choosing a faith school is really important, there will often be no state-funded alternative at all locally, in the case of smaller faiths, or, for the larger faiths, provision with spaces available for these children at short notice. Finally, if this is the case, we are concerned that this could contribute to an increase in children who are educated at home, which is something I know the Government plan to contain through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Our concern is that the combination of pressures on these schools will cause them to close with the unintended consequences that I have outlined. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain what assessment the Government have made of each of these three risks, and how they plan to mitigate them. I beg to move.