UK Parliament / Open data

Schools Bill [HL]

The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is a characteristically sensible suggestion. I hope that the Government are mindful and assure the House that there is no loophole or that an amendment will be used to close it. The amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn raise similar important issue. The Minister is nodding, so I am sure that she will have something positive to say about this.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about excluded children, is an important one. Maybe we cannot deal with everything in his remarks through this Bill, but I hope that we can attend to those issues that have been around for such a long time. We still see managed moves used far too frequently. It is gaming the system. We know that it goes on. I am sure that when we put in measures to deal with that there will then be another set of behaviours to tackle, but such is life.

On our Amendment 171G, I was very keen to get something in the Bill that has come out of Josh MacAlister’s potentially ground-breaking report. MacAlister’s argument is that in too many places the contribution and voice of education is missing from multi-agency safeguarding conversations. I hear often from partners, usually in health, how difficult it is to engage with schools. Schools want their voices to be heard and to have a statutory role but are unable to do so at the moment. The recommendation from the MacAlister report is that there should be the opportunity that there is in this Bill—well, I am saying that it is an opportunity in this Bill. If we do not take it, I wonder whether when we get the Government’s full response to the MacAlister report we will look back at this and regret that we did not take the opportunity of what is quite a simple recommendation.

9.30 pm

MacAlister said that children constantly face new threats, including online harms. There are ever more sophisticated criminal networks and what he describes as the best team need to be on the field. That should include schools. He has a really important point, and it might be a good idea to incorporate that into this Bill.

At the risk of disrupting the friendly tone of consensus in our deliberations so far, I want to speak to the issue in Amendment 154 on the tax status of private schools. It is something that we on these Benches have felt quite strongly about and have had a growing interest in in recent years. The point we want to make is that independent schools are not charities, and we should not be treating them as if they are. The services they provide are not primarily for public benefit; they are for the benefit of those who can afford to use them.

Some private schools offer bursaries and I have heard every argument and thread in this row over the years. We obviously know that they offer bursaries and many of them go to some considerable effort to contribute to the public good. That is recognised, appreciated, valued and respected. But that is no different to the way many businesses operate. Timpson, for example, does wonderful work with offenders—it provides opportunities and does great stuff—but Timpson is not a charity. The fact that many private schools work in their communities and offer some opportunities is very much on their terms and is quite limited. We do not consider that that makes them charities.

Around 500,000 pupils attend independent schools in the UK. It is true that around one-third of these receive some help with their school fees, but most of these children win scholarships or benefit from something like a staff discount. Among those who get some help, only a very small minority pay no fees at all. It is not usually means-tested. The average amount of financial support received is around one-third of the fee. Given that I have seen estimates of an average fee at between £13,00 and £15,500, that is still a lot of money for a child attending—even with support from the school—to have to find: around £8,000 to £10,000 per year. Only 1.5% of means-tested bursaries and scholarships include any help at all with additional costs like uniform, so we really query the “widening opportunities, social mobility” arguments that you hear in defending charitable status.

We know too that only 7% of the population go to private schools and yet they account for nearly two-thirds of senior judges, six in 10 Permanent Secretaries, and—I read somewhere—around six in 10 Members of the House of Lords. I do not know if that is still true, but I hope that does not affect in any way how we consider what is a very sensible amendment to this Bill.

Charitable status gives private schools around 80% relief on their business rates and saves a school like Eton more than £500,000 a year. We think we can save around £1.7 billion by removing tax breaks for private schools. Even if you are relaxed about the impact on society, equal opportunities and all of those issues, it is very difficult to argue that this is the best use of £1.7 billion. Removing a tax break from private schools should not be viewed as a matter just of ideology, though I am quite relaxed about saying that there is some ideology in this. It is also good management of public finances.

I ask noble Lords to consider whether this really is the best use of public money given the cost of living crisis and the pressures on the vast majority of families. This is about asking noble Lords to engage with the reality we face in 2022. Independent schools are just not charities in any modern sense. It is a status they have inherited for good historical reasons, but one that we think is no longer justifiable.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

823 cc311-2 

Session

2022-23

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber

Subjects

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