At Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer sparred with Rishi Sunak over why private schools were exempt from paying some taxes by declaring charitable status.
Under current laws, private schools can claim charitable status and be subject to tax relief. Most private schools hold such status.
The tax breaks make private schools exempt from paying VAT on their school fees, and in England and Wales they can also claim 80 per cent or more relief on business rates.
It is a topic of controversy which has divided opinion, with YouGov releasing findings from one of its polls in September showing that 47 per cent of respondents were in favour of removing tax exemptions for private schools.
Now, Sir Keir has hit out at the fact that private schools can keep money back from the public purse.
He lined his attack against the private school that the PM himself once attended, Winchester College.
Sir Keir said: “Winchester College has a rowing club, a rifle club, an extensive art collection, they charge over £45,000 a year in fees.
“Why did (the prime minister) hand them nearly £6 million of taxpayers' money this year in what his own levelling up secretary (Michael Gove) calls egregious state support?”
It is true that Gove has previously criticised tax breaks for private schools. In a column he wrote in the Times in 2017, Gove questioned whether tax relief for such institutions was justifiable.
However, the prime minister said that by attacking him about where he was educated, Sir Keir was “attacking the hard-working aspiration of millions of people in this country” and “people like my parents”.
Sunak said: “This is a country that believes in opportunity not resentment. He doesn't understand that and that's why he's not fit to lead.”
The Independent Schools Council has argued that removing VAT exemptions from private school fees would “threaten the survival of the smallest independent schools” and raise costs for “the families who work the hardest to pay the fees”.
It adds that more families being unable to afford private education and more independent schools closing would force more pupils to attend state school, applying additional pressure to the government’s state schools budget.
But Sir Keir suggested that more tax accrued from private schools could be redirected to improve standards and capacity in state schools.
The prime minister defended his party’s records on schools, saying that standards have already improved - as shown by Ofsted inspection outcomes – and that billions of pounds of additional funding for state schools had already been announced by his government in the Autumn Statement.
Image by HM Treasury and The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP - , OGL 3, on Wikimedia Commons
