Labour’s plans to abolish private schools would have ‘severe consequences’, warns expert | Personal Finance | Finance

Campaign manager for TaxPayers’ Alliance, Duncan Simpson, spoke to Express.co.uk about the impact of Labour’s manifesto plans on the taxpayer. During the Labour Party’s conference in Brighton, delegates endorsed a radical plan to abolish private schools and redistribute their assets to the state sector. The decision sparked outrage with experts like Mr Simpson warning that this would have “severe consequences” on taxpayers who would be forced to foot the bill.

He told Express.co.uk: “Those who send kids to private school are obviously already paying for the education of kids who don’t go to private school on top of fees for that.

“Most private schools are benefitting from a relatively generous position already in the tax code.

“They don’t pay VAT, certain reduced rates, obviously they have charity status which is advantageous for that.

“It’s about seven or eight percent of the total number of kids in education who are in private school.”

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He continued: “The cost of transferring all of that over to the state sector will be well in excess of the current tax advantages which quite a few of these private schools enjoy.

“I don’t know what the particular view in the Labour Party is on how they would actually implement that, for example to make sure there would be enough spaces and how this impacts people’s taxes.

“That’s going to be quite a severe consequence in terms of how do we actually pay for hundreds of thousands of more kids moving from the private sector to the state sector.”

Mr Simpson also spoke to Express.co.uk about Labour’s £200 billion plans to nationalise industries like water and rail, which would “directly affect pensioners”.

He continued: “A lot of pension funds in this country are invested in some of the largest companies in the UK.

“So obviously renationalisation of these industries would directly affect a lot of pensioners, or soon to be pensioners, who have a lot of their income tied up in these companies.

“Additionally if there are plans for a 10 percent expropriation of shares in listed companies, which aren’t nationalised, and 10 percent of shares eventually go to workers who then have the more direct say over the running of the company in theory.

“Again that affects basically anyone who has a pension that isn’t derived from taxes.

“So teachers, doctors, nurses, everybody else, and there are almost 20 million people have a private sector pension would be directly affected by such changes.”