A Labour Government introducing VAT on private school fees is long overdue

Labour's proposed ending of the VAT exemption on private school fees, far from being open to criticism, is long overdue.

Even Michael Gove, when Education Secretary, said such exemption is unfair and “effectively allows the wealthiest people to buy a prestige service at a 20 per cent discount”.

And the advantages that are bought are manifest.

Twenty British Prime Ministers went to Eton and looking at the photos of the Bullingdon Club does not give a flattering picture of those who come to accept they were born to rule.

And in Scotland, Edinburgh in particular, something of the same applies.

Almost half of Scottish judges and 32 per cent of high ranking medical staff went to private schools.

Standing by Inverleith House in the botanic gardens the comparison between the towers of Fettes College in its vast acres and the council run Broughton High squeezed in the corner of a field is a striking illustration of the divide in secondary education in Edinburgh.

It could have been a bit better if the 1979 election had not intervened to stop the local council taking over Heriots and Mary Erskine’s.

So the time is now well overdue to begin to end the unfairness by ending the public subsidy we give to the very rich to buy privilege.

For a pupil in the top classes at Fettes the subsidy amounts to about £8,000 and is even higher, of course, for an Etonian.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimates it would raise £1.5 billion which a Labour Government would use to fund 6,500 teachers in the public sector.

The scare stories that many pupils would move from private schools and overcrowd the public sector is not credible with falling rolls which have already allowed us to take pupils from Ukraine and Afghanistan without disruption.

There are private schools in other countries but not to the extent we have in the UK, and in Finland, one of the fairest countries there are almost none, as in Singapore, one of the world’s most successful economies.

Before anyone rushes to accuse me of hypocrisy as I had my secondary education in a private school, that was my mother’s decision and my experience is one of the factors that motivates me now and why my wife and I sent our three children to local schools.

I hope the SNP and Liberal Democrats, who claim to be radical parties and to espouse fairness, will back Labour in our policy on ending this unfair subsidy of the wealthy by the rest of us.

To sign up to the Daily Record Politics newsletter, click here