‘Horrible and pernicious’ is how Labour’s plans to tax private school fees have been described by the education secretary on a visit to Shinfield and Wokingham.
Conservative minister Gillian Keegan was visiting Pauline Jorgensen, the party’s candidate for Earley and Woodley, and Wokingham newcomer Lucy Demery and discussed the issue of adding VAT to the education bills.
Mrs Jorgensen said: “The parents are not all well-heeled, they want the best education for their children.
“There is a lot of private schooling in this area, and if private schools have to close or people can’t afford to use them, there is no space in the public sector.
Mrs Keegan backed up this view, saying: “I think it’s a pernicious policy, I also think it’s very ill thought through.”
One parent claimed she would have to pay £10,000 more per year to keep sending her three children to private school.
The Labour Party says adding VAT to private school fees would raise £1.5 billion, which would be used to train 6,500 more teachers.
Mrs Keegan said: “The reason ostensibly to do it is to get more teachers to solve the problem we have recruiting maths teachers.
“We have 27,000 more teachers than we had in 2010, and in the last two years 3,000 more teachers, so we don’t need to do this to get more teachers.
“For maths teachers, we’ve put £6,000 in an additional payment on top of the £30,000 minimum starting salary which we put in place last September.
“All of that will start to work through and have an impact.”
Full Fact, a fact checking website, says that while it is true the number of full-time teachers has gone up, so have pupil numbers, so there are now fewer teachers relative to the number of pupils than in 2010.
Teachers in Reading went on strike last year over pay and conditions. The dispute ended in August, when the government agreed to award a pay rise of 6.5%.
Mrs Keegan said: “When I first got the job as education secretary, the very first thing I had was a letter from all the unions saying ‘We need £2 billion’ to keep up with the previous year’s higher-than-expected pay rise for teachers, and also inflationary pressures.
“I got that £2 billion, which was not inconsequential, but I got that and we put more money into schools.”
However, Yuan Yang, Labour’s candidate for Earley and Woodley, said it was ending a tax loophole.
“I want to clarify that this is a tax on private schools as businesses, not on parents,” she said. “It’s down to each school’s management team to decide whether and how much they raise fees.
“Over the past decade, private schools on average have raised their fees by 20% more than inflation has gone up, creating high profits.
“Most schools will have the option of absorbing the VAT increase and not passing it on to parents, if their management decides to do so.”
People present at the campaign stop also raised concerns about road safety for private school pupils going to and from Crossfields School in Shinfield.
Mrs Jorgensen is also leader of the opposition on Wokingham Borough Council. In March, she took part in a debate on whether a pedestrian crossing should be installed outside the school.
Cllr Jorgensen proposed a motion at a borough council meeting to deliver a crossing ‘without delay’ in the road. This was amended to state that a crossing would be delivered only if a technical assessment met criteria for a crossing and when funding became available to make access to the school safer.
Mrs Keegan is the Conservative candidate for Chichester.
