SARAH VINE: Whacking VAT on faculty charges will make life simpler for wealthy

When asked ‘what is a socialist’, Keir Starmer has a ready reply: ‘I am!’ When asked ‘what is a woman?’ he’s not so sure. A week into the election campaign, and we’re still none the wiser as to whether he thinks a woman can have a penis. Come on, Sir Keir, yes or no? We need to know.

In truth though, Starmer doesn’t need to proclaim his socialism. It’s abundantly clear. Only a dyed-in-the-wool socialist would put forward a policy as divisive and as short-sighted as whacking VAT on public school fees.

It’s pure dog-whistle stuff, designed to appeal to the donkey-jacketed, badge-wearing, eat-the-rich core of the Labour Party – in other words all those Corbynites feeling left out as Sir Keir attempts to woo Waitrose Woman by ruling out mean things like hikes in income tax and National Insurance.

Or, as we saw yesterday, getting groups of gushing, ‘fan boy’ business leaders to back him. One can’t help wondering what the incentive there is, given that ruling out income tax and NI raises will almost certainly mean a raid on capital gains and corporation tax to fund new spending. Perhaps Labour’s New Year’s honours list will make for enlightening reading.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson during a visit to a school in Harlow, Essex

But I digress. Back to VAT on public schools, which Labour claims will raise money for more teachers in the state sector and improve standards overall.

You’ve heard of ‘girl maths’ – that tongue-in-cheek social media trend where women find increasingly outlandish excuses to rationalise unjustified spending decisions?

Well, this is the political equivalent: Labour maths. A load of self-indulgent nonsense that may fuel the politics of envy, but which makes no financial – or social – sense at all. And here’s why.

Firstly, the policy will actually benefit the wealthy. For rich parents, the 20 per cent VAT will be an annoyance and an inconvenience, but it won’t be a deal-breaker.

Mama will just have to buy one less Chanel handbag, or rein in the Pilates instructor; Papa might have to forgo that shooting weekend with his old university friends, or maybe book Cornwall instead of Antigua for the Christmas holidays this year.

Not only will they be able to keep their children at public school, it will be easier to get them in, since all those annoyingly bright bursary students will be out of the picture.

Thus, places like Eton, Winchester, Wycombe Abbey, Harrow and other top schools will become even more elitist. And because they will now be paying VAT, they will be exempt from their duties as charities, which currently oblige them to meet certain criteria, such as offering opportunities to disadvantaged students.

Brilliant socialist logic, I’m sure you will agree. Lock poor kids out of the system while making sure that rich ones have even more choices open to them. Karl Marx must be doing a veritable jig in his grave.

Let’s not forget that a fee-paying student is one the state sector doesn’t have to fund – and yet one whose parents still contribute to the overall education budget (via the tax system) for a service they don’t use. Far from being elitist parasites, these parents actually free up resources, just as a patient who pays to go private is saving the NHS money by not requiring treatment.

Under Starmer’s plan, thousands of those pupils will go straight back on the taxpayers’ books. He hasn’t even got the keys to No 10 yet, and already parents are pulling their children out of the private sector. 

So far, the exodus of approximately 3,000 children has cost the taxpayer £22million in additional school places. Scale up those numbers and it’s easy to see how extra costs could balloon.

According to the latest estimates, almost a quarter of a million pupils could leave the private sector because of this policy in the next five years – 42 per cent of the total. Labour claims the scheme will generate £1.7billion in tax, but the Adam Smith Institute calculates that if even just a quarter of private pupils are forced to join the state sector – let alone the almost half predicted to – it could cost taxpayers £1.6billion. See? Labour maths.

And that’s before we’ve considered capacity. State schools are already oversubscribed, and cash is not always the barrier to expansion. Many are in overpopulated areas where extra space is simply not available, or where local planning restrictions make it impossible.

As for outstanding state schools – well, they already generate their own economic ecosystems, pushing up rents and house prices in surrounding catchment areas. Once again, by increasing competition for state school places, Labour is going to create a housing bubble in the immediate vicinity of those schools, which will inevitably result in poorer pupils being priced out of the market.

But it doesn’t end there. Here’s another way this policy will benefit the private sector: the booming market in private tuition. The internet is already awash with sites offering paid one-to-one help, usually via Zoom, for pupils struggling or aiming for the top grades.

The market exploded during lockdown, and it shows no signs of abating as more and more parents try to boost their children’s chances in a grade-inflated market. Prices range from £30 an hour to £150 for the top-scoring tutors. Oh, and fun fact: the sites are full of state school teachers moonlighting. How will they feel about having to give up their nice little side hustles?

The problem with socialism, as we have seen time and time again, is that it is an abstract ideology, not a way of life. It fails to understand the fundamentals of human behaviour, which is that we are essentially pack animals, highly competitive and aspirational in nature.

Labour claims VAT on school fees will raise money for more teachers in the state sector 

According to the latest estimates, almost a quarter of a million pupils could leave the private sector because of the policy

For the record, I’m no big fan of the independent sector. But I do believe in choice. I did not educate my two privately, but that was partly because their father was at one time education secretary and I’m a firm believer in practising what you preach.

In an ideal world, children from all socio-economic backgrounds should study together, not least because education is about expanding the mind, and it’s important to see how other people live.

My two learned a lot from their environment that they might not have experienced had they been in the independent sector, and they have friends from all walks of life. My hope has always been that this will make them more rounded adults – but it was not a cost-neutral exercise. Both experienced some very unpleasant and intense bullying because of their specific family circumstances, and both in their own ways have been deeply affected by it.

I think it was a price just about worth paying. But if I sometimes question that choice, at least I had one. I could have at any point pulled my child out of a difficult situation and placed them in a different environment.

And that’s my last and final point about why this policy is so pernicious. It assumes that the reason people choose to educate their children in the independent sector is because they’re all wannabe toffs. That is emphatically not the case.

Just ask Diane Abbott, Labour firebrand and former flame of Jeremy Corbyn, who in 2003 was roundly criticised for sending her son to the then-£10,000-a-year City of London School.

At the time, she acknowledged the inconsistency but added: ‘I had to choose between my reputation as a politician and my son.’ And for all her hypocrisy, I respected that. She did what was right for her child.

There are countless children out there for whom the local state school just isn’t the right option. Currently, their parents have a choice. Under this policy, in many cases, they will not. Private education will truly become the preserve of the very rich, and the rest will just have to fight over the scraps government throws them.

But then that’s socialism for you.