Sir Keir Starmer says there is ‘no evidence’ private schools will have to close due to Labour’s VAT plans
Sir Keir Starmer has said there is “no evidence” private schools will be forced to close due to Labour’s plans to impose VAT on them.
Speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge, the Labour leader defended his party’s education policy to use the money to support state schools.
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“I think they will adapt,” he said. “They’ve had lots of increases in costs over the last 14 years and they’ve accommodated it.
“There’s no evidence to show these schools will close. They don’t have to pass the cost on to parents.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer with Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Thursday
Private schools are currently exempt from VAT – but the Labour Party has pledged to close the current loophole.
Sir Keir was grilled on the policy at the Sky News Leaders’ event in Grimsby.
It’s a difficult choice’
Addressing parents’ concerns, he added: “It’s a difficult choice. But they’re businesses in the end and they’re very successful in the round.
“I want them to thrive. But we need to make this choice, because in the end, if I want the teachers we need in our state secondary schools, I have to answer the question you would put to me, just how are you going to pay for that?
“You’re going to pay for that by getting rid of the tax breaks for private schools, and use it to invest in the teachers we need in our state secondaries.”
Sir Keir was also pressed on the recent backlash to the policy, which Ms Ridge suggested may be related to “many people in Westminster and in the media who either went to private school or send their children there”.
“I think there’s an element of that,” he replied.
Grammer school background
The Labour leader spoke to Sky News following the final TV debate between he and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak before voters go to the polls on 4 July.
A snap Sky News poll suggested the public viewed their performance at the event in Nottingham on Wednesday equally.
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Sunak and Starmer’s final face-off
Ms Ridge also quizzed the Labour leader on his own education. He attended a grammar school in Surrey, which became private while he was there.
Asked how he felt about the change, he said: “I don’t think I even appreciated it.
“If you ask all the people that were at school with me – we started off as state grammar school boys, paid for by the local authority – we ended up as state grammar school boys paid for by the local authority.”
He stressed the funding and support from the council remained the same.
“It’s obviously very different now, but it is very important to me that every child has those opportunities,” he added.
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The Labour leader says his first steps should he be in Downing Street on 5 July are 40,000 extra NHS appointments to reduce waiting lists, recruiting secondary school teachers, and setting up ‘Great British Energy’ to minimise energy bill rises.
NHS fit ‘for the future’
Specifically on the NHS, he said he aims to “change the very model of the NHS” to “make much greater use of AI” and ensure it is more preventative and community-based.
“Creating the NHS is one [moment] we celebrate every year,” he said.
“I want to make sure that in the 50, 60, 70 years people are celebrating the fact that an incoming Labour government in 2024 made sure the NHS was not something to just proudly look back on, but is actually built fit for the future.”
Asked for his general feelings as the election campaign comes to an end, he said: “We’ve been here for four-and-a-half years.
“I woke up with a smile on my face on 1 January, because I knew we’d have an election this year.
“We’re ready for this. We’ve got a positive offer to put to the country. So we’re campaigning with a smile and a spring in our step.”
After his rival Mr Sunak told a previous TV debate he eats too much Haribo during election campaigns, Sir Keir said coffee was his vice to get him through
“Coffee coupled with cheese sandwiches and tuna sandwiches in the back of that Labour bus,” he said.
Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali has resigned after reportedly hiking the rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds – something described by one of her tenants as “extortion”.
That was just weeks after the previous tenants’ contract ended, The i Paper said.
Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Ms Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, and which also gave them four months’ notice to leave, the newspaper reported.
The property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the publication added.
In a letter to the prime minister, Ms Ali said that remaining in her role would be a “distraction from the ambitious work of this government”.
She added: “Further to recent reporting, I wanted to make it clear that at all times I have followed all relevant legal requirements.
“I believe I took my responsibilities and duties seriously, and the facts demonstrate this.”
Laura Jackson, one of Ms Ali’s former tenants, said she and three others collectively paid £3,300 in rent.
Weeks after she and her fellow tenants had left, the self-employed restaurant owner said she saw the house re-listed with a rent of around £4,000.
“It’s an absolute joke,” she said. “Trying to get that much money from renters is extortion.”
Sir Keir Starmer said Ms Ali’s work in government would leave a ‘lasting legacy’. Pic: PA
Ms Ali’s house, rented on a fixed-term contract, was put up for sale while the tenants were living there, and was only relisted as a rental because it had not sold, according to The i Paper.
The government’s Renters’ Rights Bill includes measures to ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months.
The Bill, which is nearing its end stages of scrutiny in Parliament, will also abolish fixed-term tenancies and ensure landlords give four months’ notice if they want to sell their property.
Something Sir Keir’s increasingly unpopular government could have done without
Rushanara Ali’s swift and humiliating demise is a classic example of paying the price for the politician’s crime of “Do as I say, not as I do”.
She was Labour’s minister for homelessness, for goodness’ sake, yet she ejected tenants from her near-£1m town house then hiked the rent.
A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.
MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: a degree in PPE from Oxford University.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.
She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said the government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.
She was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000, a rent increase of more than 20%.
In an area represented by the left-wing firebrand George Galloway from 2005 to 2010, Ms Ali had a majority of under 1,700 at the election last year.
Ominously for Labour, an independent candidate was second and the Greens third. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will also stand next time.
In her resignation letter to the PM, Ms Ali said continuing in her ministerial role would be a distraction. Too right.
A distraction Sir Keir and his increasingly unpopular government could have done without.
Responding to her resignation, shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said: “I said that her actions were total hypocrisy and that she should go if the accusations were shown to be true.”
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: “Rushanara Ali fundamentally misunderstood her role. Her job was to tackle homelessness, not to increase it.”
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Previously, a spokesperson for Ms Ali said the tenants “stayed for the entirety of their fixed term contract, and were informed they could stay beyond the expiration of the fixed term, while the property remained on the market, but this was not taken up, and they decided to leave the property”.
The prime minister thanked Ms Ali for her “diligent work” and for helping to “deliver this government’s ambitious agenda”.
Sir Keir Starmer said her work in putting in measures to repeal the Vagrancy Act would have a “significant impact”.
And he said she had been trying to encourage “more people to engage and participate in our democracy”, something that would leave a “lasting legacy”.
Politics
Rushanara Ali: Humiliating demise for Labour minister after a most egregious case of double standards
Rushanara Ali’s swift and humiliating demise is a classic example of paying the price for the politician’s crime of “do as I say, not as I do”.
She was Labour’s minister for homelessness, for goodness’ sake, yet she ejected tenants from her near-£1m town house and then hiked the rent.
Politics Hub: Minister’s resignation as it happened
A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.
Rushanara Ali reportedly hiked the rent on a property she owns. Pic: PA
‘A heavy heart’ – really?
MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: A degree in PPE from Oxford University.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.
She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said her government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.
The now former minister was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000 – a rent increase of more than 20%.
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The report about the Labour MP first emerged in the i newspaper. Pic: UK Parliament
A fragile constituency for Labour?
In an area represented by the left-wing firebrand George Galloway from 2005 to 2010, Ms Ali had a majority of under 1,700 at the election last year.
Ominously for Labour, an independent candidate was second and the Greens third. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will also stand next time.
In her resignation letter to the PM, Ms Ali said continuing in her ministerial role would be a distraction. Too right.
A distraction Sir Keir and his increasingly unpopular government could have done without.
Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Adriana Kugler announced her resignation on Aug. 1, paving the way for a Trump nominee at the US central bank.
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