Contribution
I rise in support of the majority of the amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats. Reducing the high street business rates relief from 75% to 40% will devastate the small businesses on my high streets in Batley and Dewsbury, and many of them will not be able to absorb the costs, resulting in job losses and closures. My primary topic, however, will be the implications of the Bill for private schools that do not draw their students from the richest families in our society.
When I spoke out against the introduction of VAT in previous debates, I was accused of not wanting the best for 94% of students in our country. I absolutely love state schools, and I visited Boothroyd primary academy during UK Parliamentary Week last week. The children were so excited to meet me, but I think I was more excited to meet them and their teachers. I also visited a private faith school that charges, I believe, less than £3,000 per pupil and spoke to the pupils there. There are private schools that serve poor working-class families, and there is a reason why these families have chosen to send their children to such schools. Parents would be penalised if we removed that choice. The other challenge that I have in my constituency is that schools are bursting at the seams, with very few, if any, places available to parents. Many children are going to their second or third-choice schools, away from their catchment area.
Let me come back to the removal of private schools’ charitable status, which is an extra burden on top of charging VAT at 20%. Students at such schools overwhelmingly come from low-income families, and this reality often gets lost in the debate about private schools. We are all very aware of their elitist nature. With average fees of over £15,000, rising to £50,000, they service only the children of the wealthiest. It is not the children of the wealthy, however, who attend independent schools in constituencies such as Dewsbury and Batley, where faith schools are often the only option for families who cannot get their children into local state schools due to demand, or where state schools cannot meet their religious and spiritual needs. Those families are overwhelmingly from low-income backgrounds, and the removal of business rates charitable rate relief from private schools will result in a further increase in their fees, in addition to the proposed VAT. For wealthy families, that might not be a problem. For the families in my constituency, it is a major problem.
In addition, the measures will pose a risk to the future viability of many private schools, which often charge just enough to exist. I ask the Government to consider that class is a reality in the discussion about private schools, but not in the way it is commonly presented. In many communities, faith-based schools are not the preserve of the wealthy; they overwhelmingly educate the children of ordinary working-class families. The Government’s impact assessment of the proposals shows that the average cost, per school, of the removal of charitable status ranges from £27,000 to £179,000 a year for faith schools.
This issue is more complicated than measures to raise tax, and it feels to me that some important subtleties have been lost in the debate. For many of my constituents, faith schools not only provide high-quality education; they also provide children of faith with the relative freedom to express their faith and identity without fear of stigma or recrimination. I feel that none of this reality was properly considered when we discussed VAT on private schools, and now, through abolishing business rates charitable rate relief for private schools, that imbalance continues. The Government have an opportunity now to redress that imbalance, and I request that consideration be given to extending the exclusions for special needs schools to include faith-based schools that draw their students from low-income backgrounds. One easy solution would be to exempt from VAT schools that charge below per-pupil state school allowance, and allow them to retain their charitable status.