I genuinely want pro-VAT people to answer these two questions

[Seenandheard]

(1) Do you realise that a private school child saves the tax payer/government thousands of pounds per year by not taking up a space in state school? Not to mention the space in the classroom/competition for places? (Do you care about this point or gloss over it in your minds?!)

(2) Do ypu realise that taxing education is illegal in the EU?

Yes or no to both points, please.

I do not want reams of uninformed angry opinions. I don't want this to turn into a multi page thread/bun fight. I just want to understand whether people realise these two points, really, truly understand them. Because it seems to me that there is a mentality of "they're getting a tax break" (WRONG) or "they're taking something away from my child" (WRONG) or "they can afford it so they can spread their wealth a bit" (I'm not going into the fact that my family spend more on taxes than Nordic countries, who have a far, far higher standard of living. We give so much, get almost nothing in return- but apparently we need to give more. More. More.)

I think my deep rooted anger here is to do with people's attitudes and uninformed opinions more than the policy itself. I need to know if people are aware of the facts.

Just because something exists doesn't mean it's not outdated. My 3 year old smartphone is outdated.

My bet is that this policy will not go through. There will be some technicality, there will be a U turn. Why? Because modern Labour, like the Conservatives, is too scared of pissing off the rich.

Never mind 'politics of envy', for decades now this country has been run on the politics of ransom. I have already seen a few, 'we'll leave the country' posts over this. That's the wealthy answer to everything and it is why the middles, which so many here claim to care so much about, get squeezed. As a nation, the UK has been, and will likely continue to be, held to ransom by the few. There's much hand-wringing over losing the wealthier folk, which is why there's brief periods of lip-service paid to closing loopholes allowing avoidance of taxes to show willing, whilst still finding increasing ways to extract money from everyone else.

It won't be the cries of the scrimping and saving parents of SEND kids that will put paid to it, it will be the 'we'll move' brigade. The ransom demanders. The 'I don't want to pay even though it won't make a blind bit of difference materially to my life' brigade.
Nobody likes paying tax. Only the wealthy get to avoid it on a grand scale and still get listened to when they complain. Meanwhile, the rest of us will watch how much we sell on vinted so we don't fall foul of HMRC, knowing full well we are a much easier target, and we are much more likely to get caught and fined.
A blind eye will still be turned to the huge exodus of taxable cash occuring on a daily basis as government continues to pay the ransom demanded by the 'we'll just leave the country' people whose offshore investments means their contributions aren't actually much at all in reality.

Also, that 4m people voted for Reform is singularly the best reason for keeping the FPTP system - it provides a failsafe against extremist parties gaining too much power.

Extremists thrive in low turnout elections. We'd do better to focus on increasing public trust in politics, increasing engagement in politics and therefore ensuring turnout is high.

But Labour won by a landslide, by any yardstick. Even if it was more a result of anti Tory sentiment than anything.

The policy will most definitely go through @ObelixtheGaul. The government would look very weak if it didn’t and Starmer’s already flexed his muscles to demonstrate that he won’t tolerate any interference with enacting the policies that got him elected.

"The number of seats won was large"... er, yeah that's what makes it a landslide victory! Electoral success is measured by seats won. It's not much use to then retrospectively assess the result using some other measure (vote share).

All parties knew how the system works before the campaign began, and Labour decided to focus their efforts on marginal seats rather than wastefully piling up votes in safe seats - a strategy that massively paid off. If we didn't have FPTP they wouldn't have done that, and voters would have behaved differently too, so it's hardly a valid basis for criticism.

There were kids from well of backgrounds who parents were hugely invested in their education. In other locations they would certainly have been private. Here those invested parents used their talents and resources to fundraise for the school, push for changes, volunteer, arrange things etc etc.
In doing the best for their children they raised the level of the whole school including for parents who couldn't afford to contribute to new equipment or worked full time so couldn't volunteer.
Such a bonkers argument. I am a parent who could have theoretically afforded private for my children before VAT (a single parent and all my income is earned from scratch, in case anyone wants to sling mud).
I don't volunteer, sharp-elbow or arrange things at school. I don't have any time for it. Too busy worky worky payey taxey. Boring, I know.

I was agreeing with you until the last paragraph where you have have these preconceived ideas about the families of privately educated children. No they are not millionaires, but yes they are well off. They mainly consist of parents who own a small business or who are university trained or have worked their way up at work and they now both earn a decent wage added together. They don’t have Swiss villas or yachts or multiple homes across the country like many think. The demographics is a lot older than state schools too. Parents of children in reception will be late 30s and well into their 40s for example.

I believe you are confusing privately educated families with the likes of the corrupt Etonian conservative elite.

Based on the cars I see pull up outside our local private school, I suspect a significant proportion of the parents would be able to cover the added VAT by choosing HSE rather than Autobiography spec for their next Range Rover.

What makes you think the 1% set the pay of the 99%? Why stop there, should people at the border of the top 40% pay someone at the border of the top 60%? Do you slip a fiver to the server at McDonalds to even things up?

Last time I checked, shareholders (everyone from your pension fund, to the Norwegian government m) votes for management based on, in part, the profits they make. If Tesco (UK’s largest private employer) doubles the pay on the shop floor they’d swing from a 3% profit to a >3% loss (or have to put food prices up 10%)

The whole class warfare thing is quite old fashioned and simply not based in fact.

I don’t think any sane person is against some broadly redistributive taxation system (which the UK is) but let’s not get carried away.

In fact it might surprise many that the top 1% are the only group in the UK paying a higher proportion of the total tax paid in the UK over the past 30 years

I think there is a split. Some people genuinely will find it very tough to pay as they have saved for private school over other things and might not be able to commit to an increase. Some haven’t commented or reacted badly to the increase at all. Some who can pay more but resent the gloating and excitement of others who don’t seem to realise that the people they so loathe are the ones paying the majority of the taxes that keep this country going and at the same time don’t use public services - but get vilified all the same.

They also had a policy in their manifesto that every primary school child would have access to a free breakfast club place. But we haven't heard anything about this, about when they will do it, how they will fund and staff it etc.I suspect this policy will quietly dissappear, and yes, then he will look weak!

My question is how is Starmer going to be able to do both? Put VAT on Education & get closer to the EU?

There is no 'loophole'

Sorry @Seenandheard I'm ANTI VAT, so

1. yes
2. yes

but I'm tired of explaining it to people who have their fingers in their ears.

I don't have children in private school.

Based on the cars I see pull up at our state school, I suspect they could fund a couple more teachers by reducing the spec on their next car and giving the difference to the school.

However, no one will dare ask them to do that will they, because schooling is free and how dare anyone ask them to contribute (the attitude of many state school parents when asked to pay for school trips, or provide their child's stationary, or donate to the PTA). No, the private school parents should pay for their child's education, and pay more towards our childrens education on top of the amount they pay towards it in taxes, rather than state school parents having to pay anything extra for their own childs education. If they were that bothered about it, they would contribute towards it themselves, but they would much rather the 'posho's' paid for their child instead.

Are you unaware of the fact that state schools have PTAs and do fundraising to benefit their schools? My child is at a state school and I am constantly putting my hand in my pocket. What are you on about 😅

Having worked across the education sector, and specifically secondary schools both private ( they HATE that BTW it’s always ‘independent’) and state I can tell you that families using private schools are very well off- whether that’s generational wealth ( very frequent, parents were boarders, grandparents were too), or self-made money.
And frequently the ‘self-made’ was still with mummy or daddy lending 50 thou to get started or covering the mortgage or using their connections to get someone started…

The amount of disposable income needed now to pay for £15-30k PER child plus all the bells and whistles and uniform and trips etc means that it’s already high earners sending their kids to these schools.

Your mkney, you choice. But no more tax dodging.

On a cheap flight to Europe, APD could be 100% of the ticket price......

Even on a normally priced ticket, £28 can easily be 20% of the flight cost

Yes I'm fully aware, seeing as I'm the head of ours 😂.
But the existence of something doesn't mean people don't moan about it. 'Why should I have to give money to the pta to help pay for the coaches/new whiteboards/IT upgrade/new sports equipment/stationary', the school should pay for these things. We bust an absolute gut to raise about 20k a year, from a school of around 500 families, and of that 20k a good half comes from corporate partnerships, village donations etc, so in reality it's more like 10k that comes from the parents, so about £20 per child per year, and that's a struggle. We are expecting private school parents to happily pay on average (20 % on a very average 20k school fees) 4k each towards our childrens schooling, when ours moan about giving £20 towards their own child's education.

I'd actually support this. If we put VAT on everything then we could roughly halve the rate. Much simpler.

I don't know why people want to make school fees even more expensive. All it does is make independent schools more elite.

I know two families that aren't coming back in September because they just can't afford the extra 20%.

The only people this policy affects is the squeezed middle.

They can take away our private schools, they can take away our grammar schools but they can’t take away our innate abilities or desire to ensure our children are pushed and thrive.

Get a grip. They're not taking away your private schools, they're taking away the tax breaks you previously enjoyed on your private school fees.

I don't think it makes a lot of different to state school parents (or indeed people who support the policy but don't have children in education) whether 7% or only 6% of children are in private education. This is already very elite.

@SomersetBrie it's certainly not tracking in the 'right' direction according to their ideology though is it

Thankfully the landslide majority Starmer has just secured makes it clear your views are no longer those of the majority, if they ever were.

It's not about jealousy, it's about fairness. Why is this so offensive to you?

Life's not fair. Get over it!

Complete and utter nonsense.

I work in the state education sector and have never heard parents complain about having to pay for equipment or trips for their child. Some parents genuinely cannot afford these things, in which case we subsidise them, but they are usually very apologetic and embarrassed by having to ask. Many of our parents are frequently giving up their time and money to fundraise for us. Any events the PTA run are always well attended and our parents give what they can to support the school. Parents also donate toys, games, books and uniform, not to mention our school Food Bank is only possible through parent donations. We recently had a parent who owns their own business donate several laptops and another parent made a substantial anonymous donation when they heard we were fundraising for a new sensory room for children with SEND.