Cathedral and choir schools will be ‘severely affected’ by Labour’s private school tax raid

Sep 8, 2024 by Jill

from Christian Today:

The Bishop of Southwark has said he is “deeply concerned” about the impact of the government’s plans to remove a VAT exemption from private schools.

The proposals were debated in the House of Lords on Thursday and Bishop Christopher Chessun was one of a number of critics to speak.

He warned of “adverse and unintended” consequences and said that the government needed to apply the changes with “much greater sensitivity”.

He said that although Southwark Cathedral’s boys’ and girls’ choirs are drawn mostly from state schools and therefore largely unaffected by the change, other cathedral and choir schools stand to be “severely affected”, as do private schools that serve children with special educational needs.

“Many of these are small schools, and therefore the impact will be disproportionately severe,” he said, adding that the special needs provision currently covered by private funding could not be absorbed by local authority education budgets.

He questioned the appropriateness of removing the exemption “at such short notice” on 1 January 2025, giving schools “little time to adjust budgets”.

“I am a grammar school boy and I could not sing the ‘Eton Boating Song’ if you paid me, yet I am deeply concerned about the adverse and unintended consequences which this manifesto commitment will have unless it is applied with much greater sensitivity — and possibly also phased in — affecting, as this does, the enormous variety of private school provision, about which we have heard and which is committed to public benefit,” he said.

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