As Labour edges closer to power, any hindrance to that goal is being ruthlessly removed. The £28 billion pledge in green spending has been dropped; plans to elect the House of Lords delayed. Bankers’ bonuses will remain uncapped. City financiers are subjected to prawn cocktail offensives at £1,000-a-head soirées to hear Rachel Reeves preach fiscal probity. ‘My instinct is to have lower taxes,’ the shadow chancellor insists.
Yet it’s an instinct that seems absent when it comes to easy targets such as the 2,500 independent schools in England and Wales on which Reeves wants to levy VAT and business rates. Both publicly and privately, Labour insists this pledge will remain. Insiders view it as that rarest of policies: a popular revenue-raiser. Labour cites figures by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that suggest VAT on fees could raise £1.6 billion for the state sector. Polls show a majority of every demographic group support VAT on private schools – except those who went to one or have a child at one.
Analysis by the IFS admits that up to 40,000 children could be pushed into the state system
Critics of the policy are derided as mere purveyors of privilege.
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