Yahoo Finance ‘Look my son in the eye and tell him why Labour will ruin his education’
A military mother told Sir Keir Starmer to look her 10-year-old son in the eye and “explain why Labour is planning to ruin his education” by imposing VAT on private schools.
Marie Gardner, who served in the armed forces for almost 25 years and toured Iraq, said she will have no choice but to pull her child out of school because of Labour’s planned 20pc tax raid if it wins the election.
Ms Gardner, from Oxfordshire, said she confronted the Labour leader and his team during a visit to Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard on June 5 and said: “Sir Keir I am worried about my children and your proposed tax on my children’s education is the single thing that keeps me awake at night.”
The mother-of-two added: “Look my son in the eye and explain why you are about to ruin his chances for the education that he is thriving in”.
Ms Gardner said her two children previously attended local state schools but as her eldest son struggled to adjust, she and her husband made the decision to forgo holidays and a new car to help give their son the best future possible.
Her son now attends Pinewood School in south Oxfordshire, which charges £22,000 a year.
She told The Telegraph that Sir Keir’s team, who had been visiting the city as part of a D-Day service, then organised a meeting in which only the Labour leader, Jill Cuthbertson, his head of private office, Ms Gardner and her son were present.
Ms Gardner said she explained that the 20pc levy, which the Labour leader has vowed to introduce, will force her to pull her child out of private school.
Ms Gardner said the private meeting lasted 15 minutes and ended with Sir Keir apparently promising he would “reflect” on her concerns and discuss them with his team.
She told him: “The most viable option we had was a local independent school that would meet our son’s academic and social needs. Even in the short term I have seen my child flourish and grow.
“It has cost us our savings, it has caused financial implications to our mortgage, we drive a car that was made when Labour were last in power and that I pray keeps going.
“It means we don’t take family holidays and we make big sacrifices. But it’s for our children and let’s face it, they are why I live and breathe.”
Ms Gardner said she also raised concerns about the policy’s impact on the state schools sector.
“Both my children will suffer because of this policy. This policy will hit state schools as hard as it hits independents. The state schools are at capacity,” she told Sir Keir.
“You will have a direct impact on state school children whose classes will be oversubscribed and pushed to extremes, putting more pressure on teachers and on school budgets.
“All Labour will create is a much more pronounced class divide and lose the support of a swathe of mid-salary earners who feel more punished than ever and a future generation who will recognise this Labour government as the team that destroyed their education.”
Ms Gardner said the leader rebutted the claims and reiterated the policy would fund 6,500 new state school teachers.
But she told The Telegraph: “He [Sir Keir] said he would go away and reflect and that he always brings these discussions back to his team”.
In Labour’s 142-page manifesto released on Thursday, the party said the tax raid would raise £1.5bn, and fund a raft of measures including new “expert” teachers and Ofsted reform.
The public’s fears about larger class sizes come amid a public row between senior Labour figures about the impact of the VAT raid.
Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry, last week said: “It would be fine if we have to, in the short term, have larger classes”.
But the comments were labelled as “ wrong” by Sir Keir who said analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank – which estimates up to 40,000 pupils will be forced out of private schools - shows there will be “negligible impact”.
Ms Gardner said she agreed with Sir Keir that state schools needed more funding, but told him: “There are smarter ways to raise money for education and not by punishing children and hardworking parents.”
Labour’s £1.5bn figure, quoted in its manifesto, is £190m less than the £1.7bn figure which the party initially quoted in January 2023.
Julie Robinson, chief executive of Independent Schools Council, which represents the private schools sector, previously urged for more clarity on the policy.
Ms Robinson said: “Schools and families certainly need clarity on Labour’s proposals – they cannot plan based on headlines.
“At the same time, there is great uncertainty about whether the policy will do what it is designed to do: there is a real possibility it will not raise any money for state education.”
The Labour party was approached for comment.
