Rachel Reeves ploughed ahead with tax raid despite harm to poorer families (2025)

Rachel Reeves’ own civil servants warned against the private school tax raid (Image: Getty)

Rachel Reeves was warned poorer families would be harmed by her private school tax raid before she went ahead with the policy. On the first day of a major legal battle against Labour’s VAT raid, the High Court heard that civil servants warned ministers poorer families would be affected. Lord Pannick KC, representing private schools, said that “it makes no sense” for the Government to claim the policy only impacted wealthy families.

He pointed to evidence submitted to the High Court showing a Treasury briefing after the general election outlining that 25% of families to be hit by the tax were below the average wealth level. On July 6 last year, an official briefing said: “25 % of households affected will fall in the bottom half of the household income distribution”. Lord Pannick told the court that “by their own evidence”, Labour officials admitted many children who attend fee-paying schools were from poorer families and were less likely to afford price increases.

Teachers, parents and pupils protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice against the tax (Image: Aaron Chown/PA Wire)

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He stated: “That’s a lot of people – a very considerable number of people that go to these private schools are not wealthy."

Lord Pannick said the briefing contradicted many of Ms Reeves’ arguments that private school attendance could be used to measure wealth.

He said: “It is disproportionate – indeed illogical – for the [Chancellor] to say that, because most of those at independent schools have parents with high incomes, a child’s attendance at an independent school means that their parents are wealthy."

He said many parents make “severe financial sacrifices” to be able to pay for their children’s education, who may now find it difficult to continue to pay when VAT is added to the bill.

The Labour government is being sued over its decision to apply 20% VAT to private school fees - a levy introduced on January 1. Three challenges are being heard in the High Court between April 1-3 brought by the Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents around half of UK private schools.

The VAT raid came into effect on January 1 (Image: Aaron Chown/PA Wire)

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The argument against the tax policy is of the interference with the right to education, and it disproportionately affects lower-income families. The ISC’s first claim will use seven families as human impact stories of how the policy has unfairly impacted them.

This includes children with special educational needs or disabilities (Send), a vulnerable girl in a single-sex school, Jewish and Muslim families, and foreign nationals in bilingual schools.

The second claim is brought by the private school parent group Education Not Discrimination and the third is by four private Christian schools.

In defence of the challenges is the Treasury, alongside HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Education (DfE).