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

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

The proposals were debated within the House of Lords on Thursday and Bishop Christopher Chessun was one in all quite a lot of critics to talk. 

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

He said that although Southwark Cathedral’s boys’ and girls’ choirs are drawn mostly from state schools and subsequently 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 those are small schools, and subsequently the impact can be disproportionately severe,” he said, adding that the special needs provision currently covered by private funding couldn’t 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 regulate budgets”. 

“I’m a grammar school boy and I couldn’t sing the ‘Eton Boating Song’ should you paid me, yet I’m deeply concerned in regards to the adversarial and unintended consequences which this manifesto commitment can have unless it’s applied with much greater sensitivity — and possibly also phased in — affecting, as this does, the big variety of personal school provision, about which we now have heard and which is committed to public profit,” he said. 

The House of Lords also heard from Catholic crossbench peer Lord Alton who said that the plans could also be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

He said that while wealthy families can be unaffected by the “regressive” tax, it’ll “disproportionately impact middle-income families like those of the 168,000 children who receive financial support from the independent schools or the ten,000 who pay no fees”. 

He called on the federal government to re-consider its plans.

“These are the families, a lot of whom have made great sacrifices for his or her kid’s education, who will suffer, not those with ultra deep pockets,” he said. 

“Top of our concerns needs to be the impact on children. It clearly is not. This taxation is unjust, unfair, could also be in breach of the ECHR and can likely worsen educational inequalities.

“The government should dwell a pause and re-evaluate.”

Several Christian schools have already closed down in consequence of the plans, including Kilgraston, Scotland’s only Catholic boarding school.

Cedars Christian school in Greenock, west Scotland, is closing at the tip of the month and St Joseph’s Preparatory School in Stoke-on-Trent is to shutter in December. 

The schools have all cited the VAT changes as a think about their closures. 

Niel Deepnarain, head of Unite for Education, a Scotland-based Christian education charity, said that children can be “worse off in consequence” of the closures.

“Children across Scotland are faced with increased indoctrination within the classroom, so the necessity for Christian education has never been greater,” he said. 

He added, “It is evident that the choice of the brand new Labour government to impose VAT on school fees from January has been one burden too many for families already facing high living costs.”