VAT on private school fees: justice or spite?
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2024
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The tax increases on private schools, though long trailed, were among the most emotive measures in last week’s blockbuster budget, because they’re widely seen to be as much a moral issue as a question of politics or economics. It was a former Conservative education secretary, Michael Gove, who asked: why should the state support the already wealthy to buy advantage for their children? Others see it as an attack on aspiration and excellence, ”a vindictive piece of class warfare on parents who scrimp and save to pay fees”, according to Mr Gove’s former colleague David Davies. Taxing private schools – justice or spite? PANELLISTS: Ash Sarkar, Ella Whelan, Giles Fraser, Mona Siddiqui PRESENTER: Michael Buerk PRODUCER: Catherine Murray ASSISTANT PRODUCER: Ruth Purser EDITOR: Tim Pemberton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Good evening. Who's Who, that annual almanac of the eminent, is probably the best guide to those who've made it in our society. |
| 0:12.8 | Roughly half those listed were educated at private schools. |
| 0:17.1 | Put another way, given that only 6% of our children go to them, you're 35 times more likely to make it to the top, whether as a pop star or a Supreme Court judge, if your parents could afford school fees. |
| 0:30.1 | It's that which gives the rower for the government's decision to impose taxes on private education its moral edge. |
| 0:37.1 | That unresolved tension between the presumed |
| 0:39.6 | virtue of wanting the best for your children and the alleged vice of the wealthy being able to |
| 0:44.9 | purchase an unfair advantage for them. The government says the money raised from imposing 20% |
| 0:50.9 | VAT on private schools will improve standards for the 19 out of 20 children who go to state schools. |
| 0:57.5 | They're promising 6,000 new teachers, though there are concerns that if parents can't afford the new fees, |
| 1:03.6 | they'll flood state schools and reduce the tax take. |
| 1:07.3 | But the argument's more visceral than that. |
| 1:10.3 | One side sees this as a fundamental blow for equality against the purchase of privilege and the perpetuating of an out-of-touch elite that commands the heights of public life. |
| 1:21.6 | The other as an attack on excellence driven by envy. As the conservative politician David Davis put it, a vindictive |
| 1:29.2 | piece of class warfare that hurts parents who scrimp and save for the best for their children. |
| 1:34.9 | Taxing private schools. Is it justice or spite? The moral maze tonight. The panel, Mona Siddiqui, |
| 1:41.1 | Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at Edinburgh University, |
| 1:44.9 | Ash Sarka from the Novara Media Group, the feminist author Ella Weillan, and the priest and |
| 1:50.5 | polemicist, Giles Fraser. A bit of full disclosure here. I went to Solihull, which is a |
| 1:56.6 | centuries-old private, i.e. public school in the Midlands. Giles Uppingham, wasn't it? |
| 2:02.5 | It was. My mum's scrimped and saved. She's one of those people David Davis is referring to to send me to posh school. |
| 2:09.5 | And I'm really grateful to her for the work that she did and I love her. But I'm not a massive fan of posh schools. |
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