Does Starmer hate music?

Sometimes, on slow days, I picture Sir Keir Starmer and our Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, doing the can-can while sticking their fingers in their ears and singing ‘la la la I can’t hear you’, to a backdrop of mounting concerns about VAT on school fees. It recently emerged that Tony Blair (for it is he) was firmly against it back in the 1990s, on the sound basis that taxing parents for sending their children to school is a bit stupid. But Starmer is no Blair, more’s the pity. It is abundantly clear, now, that this is an education tax, pure and simple, and that it has some decidedly problematic consequences, foreseen or not.

A part of me fears that the Labour party knows exactly what the consequences are, and simply doesn’t care. If you are a bold enough person to mention online that this tax will adversely affect you, you’ll receive responses along the lines of: ‘don’t go to the Caribbean on holiday’, or ‘here’s the world’s smallest violin’. Never mind that most private school parents can’t afford a B&B in Devon, or that the violin ‘joke’ was old when I was in short trousers. Proponents of this tax fall back on the dubious opinion that if you’re paying for it, you’re asking for it, and who cares if the little darlings don’t get their oboe lessons. Boo hoo.

Yet there are serious issues with the tax. The major one is inconsistency. It treats education differently in different settings. The Labour party believes that education suddenly becomes toxic as soon as a teacher passes through private school gates. This, of course, is mad. Why should some forms of instruction be taxable, and others not? Institutions teaching English as a Foreign Language will continue to be exempt from VAT: there is no compelling reason for this. Similarly, there is no convincing answer to the question as to why compulsory education will be taxed, while voluntary education (nursery and university) won’t be; if anything, it should be the other way round.

One bizarre ramification is that after-school clubs will be subjected to VAT, if they are run by a private school, and if they contain an element of education. God forbid if a child were to learn something! I can envisage a situation where government inspectors lurk around schools at 4.30 p.m., waiting to catch a roomful of five-year-olds in the act of opening a history book. Quick, Veronica, tax the buggers, they’re getting an unfair advantage! What I can’t envisage is an after-school club that doesn’t have an element of education in it. I’ve seen it applied to a funky dance group for four-year-olds. I don’t think they’re flossing to Pythagoras.

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Perhaps Starmer wants our children, in that crucial hour or so between end of school and pick-up time, to stare blankly at the walls, intoning party mantras. ‘Plan for change… my father was a toolmaker…’ All of this might well push schools into crazy levels of obfuscation. I can imagine the long-suffering teachers quickly hiding anything that smacked of learning as the inspectors loom: ‘Those aren’t times tables! No education going on here, honest guvnor!’

Another issue arises with music lessons. If a music teacher has a contract with a private school, VAT will be added to their lessons. Have them in your own home, and your bassoon lessons are magically tax-free. Freelance music teachers won’t charge VAT (unless they’re registered): which may mean employed music teachers losing permanent contracts, and will certainly mean less work for all of them as demand reduces. These changes do not affect state schools. And since music teaching is in crisis, and Sir Keir claims to play the flute, I wonder why this doesn’t bother him more. Either we approve of people taking music lessons, and render them VAT-free everywhere, or we don’t. To charge it at private schools but not in the state system is a straightforward case of discrimination.

All of this, of course, is affecting parents’ decisions. Facing a 20 per cent raid on fees, most will be frantically totting up the sums. Piano? Nope. After-school chess? Out the window. This will have a knock-on effect, not only on the enrichment of pupils’ lives, but on the incomes of music teachers and club leaders. In the end, everyone loses.

There’s still time to reverse this policy. But all I can see is Keir Starmer resolutely not listening, because he’s stuck in a world where top-hatted toffs whack toolmakers’ sons with their pearl-handled canes. This is not remotely representative of the world in which we live. What we need is a prime minister, and an education secretary, who understand this, and who look at what’s good in our education system, rather than seeking to crush it. Meanwhile, I’ll see you at Paint Drying Club. I’ll bring the Latin, you bring the Maths. Keep it under your hat.