Why Imposing VAT on Private Schools is Unethical
Letter to The Secretaries of State, Bridget Phillipson and Rachel Reeves
Dear Rt. Hon Phillipson and Rt. Hon Reeves,
Congratulations on Labour’s victory in May. Although I am on the other side of the political divide, I wish your new government well in its endeavour.
By way of introduction, I been a Conservative member for 32 years and I stood for parliament in 2005 in Bolsover where I ran against Labour’s Dennis Skinner MP, a marvellous individual dedicated to his principles and his constituents. I had done some voluntary work with Nirj Deva (ex-MP in Brentford & Isleworth and MEP) in the 1990s and with Anne Main (ex-MP for St. Albans) in the 2000s. I hope to re-engage with politics in due course. I was very much heartened when the Rt. Hon. Angela Rayner MP wished me luck after our pleasant discussion on LBC on 18th July 2022. I do believe in cross-party cooperation and non-divisive politics.
I have also been involved as a voluntary trainer with the government’s Prevent strategy on counter extremism where I have trained public servants on the strategy and my experience of countering extremism. Moreover, I have published three books over the last four years, mostly dealing with the race space and DE&I, and engaged in positive dialogue with different interlocutors.
The reason for writing to you is in relation to your proposed policy of cancelling VAT exemption that most private schools have benefited from. Whilst I do support the excellent letter to you from the CEO of IAPS, Dominic Norrish, where he challenged the timeline of the VAT implementation; I would go further and push back on the very idea of the VAT implementation. I vehemently disagree with this policy because it will affect thousands of children who will be taken out of their current private schools. It is not the well off parents who benefit from the VAT exemptions, but parents who depend on the scholarships and bursaries funded by VAT exemptions, so that they can send their children to appropriate private schools. In section 1.2 of your government’s technical note on ‘Applying VAT to Private Schools…’ it states, ‘the government believes in parental choice , but is also determined to fulfil the aspiration of every parent to get the best education for their child.’ Parents who choose to send their children to private schools through bursaries and scholarships, do not make wrong choices but the best choices for their children so that they can climb up the ladder of future success. Implementing VAT in these schools will only penalise these parents who are on the precipice of financial affordability and depend on bursaries, as well as punish children who will be told that they do not belong to their school community. The aim should be to expand opportunities for more children from poorer backgrounds to benefit from private education which would propel them toward future successes.
In section 1.14 of the technical note, one of the principles alluded to is to ‘be fair, with all users of private schools paying their fair share, whilst ensuring that pupils with the most acute needs are not impacted.’ The users of private schools who pay the full fees are already paying their fair share three times over. They pay for their children’s private education, they pay towards bursaries in their schools which benefit children from poorer backgrounds, and they also pay for state education through the general tax system. One cannot be fairer than that.
During my younger days I have experienced an array of education systems, i.e. state, private and boarding. I do agree with the government’s aspiration to improve overall standards of state education, which is the backbone of the British education system. No one will disagree with such an aspiration regardless of their political persuasion. Removing VAT exemption from private schools is not the answer. History has shown that raising general taxation does not always yield in greater tax receipts (a similar point alluded to by Dominic Norrish https://schoolsweek.co.uk/labours-policy-will-cause-silent-suffering-for-40000/). One way to improve the standards of state education is to expand grammar schools so that overall standards can increase. There are formidable grammar schools that would rival private schools. However, I understand that the idea of ‘selection’ goes against the grain of the Labour ethos despite some Labour parliamentarians making use of such selective schools for their children, or benefitting themselves by being educated at very selective universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard. Whilst it will be impossible for any government to dismantle such selective institutions in favour of complete equality, the VAT implementation will only do one thing, and that is to deny children from poorer backgrounds to attend the very schools which their more well-off school friends attend, thus widening class divisions, which is divisive.
Section 4.8 of the technical note states, ‘the government is therefore confident that the state sector will be able to accommodate any additional pupils and that there will not be a significant impact on the state education system as a whole.’ Whilst the government focuses on the overall negligible impact on the state system by accommodating around 40,000 children, it has completely missed the impact on these very 40,000+ children by removing them from the private system; they will be told indirectly that they do not belong in the space that is only reserved for the rich and the privileged. The psychological damage this will cause these children (whose aspirations a Labour administration is supposed to defend) is something that has not been assessed, and needs to undertaken urgently before a final decision is made about VAT implementation.
I did have the honour and the privilege to speak with the Rt. Hon. Sir Kier Starmer on 12th December 2022 on LBC Radio regarding the VAT implementation policy (and I did speak with you [Rt. Hon. Rachel Reeves] on 6th February 2023 on a different topic related to the economy), and it was clear that it is ideology that will be driving children from poorer backgrounds away from private schools; they have every right to be there. This policy runs in parallel to another policy that the New Labour government implemented in 1997 under Prime Minister Tony Blair, where they abolished the Assisted Places Scheme, which was designed to help poor parents to send their bright children to private schools of their choice through the voucher system. One of my friends was a beneficiary of this scheme. He was from a challenged background and lived on a council estate in the 1990s. The scheme was able to place him in a good private school, which led him to study at a top university, which in turn led him to work in the top consulting firms. He now lives in the leafy suburbs of West London, owns properties and continues with a successful career and family. This might be one anecdotal example, but this has been the realisation of aspiration for thousands of pupils. And when the Assisted Places Scheme was abolished in 1997, thousands of poor children were penalised, they very group that Labour is meant to defend.
Those 40,000+ children who depend on bursaries and scholarships have every right to be in their current private schools. Their aspirations for the future cannot be curtailed by ideology. Like Labour, I do believe in equality, but equalising upwards not downwards, should be the real aspiration of the government.
Yours sincerely,
Hasan Imam BSc., MBA DIC
Sales/Key Account Manager in the Pharmaceutical Industry (UK)
Managing Director, Hassan Movies Ltd. (Bangladesh)
Trainer for PREVENT Counter Extremism Strategy (2015 – 2018)
Ex-Head of Communications, Conservative Friends of Bangladesh (2008)
Parliamentary Candidate, Bolsover (2005)
Author of book, ‘BAME – Breaking Through Barriers. A Comprehensive Response to the Critics of the Commission for Race and Ethnic Disparities’
