Religious schools will be hit hardest by Labour’s VAT tax raid

Imagine the government pledged to introduce a 20 per cent tax rise on ‘bankers’. Then imagine that, when the details were announced, the new tax made no distinction between HSBC executives and lowly bank tellers on £19,000 a year. Furthermore, imagine that the public debate failed to mention the people who were going to suffer most from the policy; that commentators argued over whether the tax rise was technically workable, while ministers self-righteously declared that they were sure the richest people in the country could cope with paying a little more.

Far-fetched? Yes, but not a million miles from Labour’s proposed imposition of VAT and business rates on independent schools. Everyone is talking about the wealthiest institutions, the places which educated David Cameron and James Blunt, the ones with state-of-the-art facilities and acres of playing fields. They are not talking about the other end of the spectrum – the smallest, poorest, most threadbare schools in the country, that face a catastrophic financial threat.