Labour tax raid will force 40,000 private school pupils into state sector, warns Gillian Keegan

Gillian Keegan has warned Britain could 'sleepwalk into socialism' - Jeff Gilbert for The Telegraph

Labour’s private school tax raid will force at least 40,000 pupils into the state sector from this September, the Education Secretary has warned.

Gillian Keegan accused Sir Keir Starmer of wanting to “destroy the independent school sector” with his plan to charge 20 per cent VAT on fees.

In an interview with The Telegraph she also warned the move was “just the very first signal” that Sir Keir is planning tax rises on the middle classes.

Ms Keegan said Labour’s approach represented “off the scale hypocrisy” because senior figures in the party have used private education themselves.

She made the remarks as the general election campaign enters its final week with the Conservatives still trailing massively in the polls.

Speaking at her constituency office in Chichester, Ms Keegan admitted things “look pretty bad” but insisted this was still “the election of the undecided”.

Gillian Keegan visited a jobs fair in her constituency of Chichester as the election campaign approached its final stages - Jeff Gilbert for The Telegraph

She warned voters not to “sleepwalk into socialism” and she sounded the alarm on the risk of Labour veering to the Left once it gets power.

Ms Keegan highlighted the VAT raid on private schools as a first step towards a higher tax state which would see levies on jobs, cars and houses raised.

“Without any regard for those children, or the impact on their education, they’re going to whack a 20 per cent tax on – the first time we’ve ever taxed education in this country,” she said.

“There’s more than half a million people in the independent sector and many parents are just about managing to keep their children there in the smaller schools.

“So tens of thousands - at least 40,000 - [pupils will be forced to go] unplanned into the state sector this September. The impact of that shows that [Labour] just don’t care about the kids.”

Schools say more pupils could be hit

The Education Secretary was citing figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank which has estimated that 7 per cent of pupils could be forced out of private schools.

The Independent Schools Council, which represents the private education sector, has claimed that the true number could be up to 100,000.

Ms Keegan also hit back at comments by David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, in which he criticised the “public school smallness” of senior Tories.

She said the comments showed Labour “don’t understand” that most independent schools are small and when they talk about them “they think it’s Eton”.

“The hypocrisy of the Labour Party on private schools is off the scale,” she added. “Half of them went to one and the other half send their kids to one.

“And the thing that working class people don’t like is hypocrisy. They don’t mind if someone’s got money. We all aspire to it. They don’t like hypocrisy.”

She added: “It’s an ideology that wants to destroy the independent school sector, like in the past they destroyed other parts of the education sector.”

Labour ‘fixated on class’

Ms Keegan suggested the private school policy is motivated by a fixation on class and was scathing about Bridget Phillipson, her Labour shadow.

“I can’t imagine someone who wants to be the education secretary who has so little regard for children just because they view them or judge them to be from potentially a different class,” she said.

Four shadow cabinet ministers attended private secondary schools – John Healey on defence, Louise Haigh on transport and Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chairman.

Sir Keir went to a grammar school which turned independent while he was there, though because he was an existing student his parents did not pay any fees.

Labour figures have previously been criticised for choosing to send their children to independent schools whilst criticising private education.

They include Diane Abbott, the veteran Left-wing MP, who sent her son to a private school despite criticising them for “propping up the class system in society”.

Ms Keegan, 56, comes from working-class roots on Merseyside. She attended her local state secondary, becoming its first pupil to get 10 O-Levels before leaving at 16 to become an apprentice at a car components factory.

Unlike many of her colleagues, she came to the Tories from a non-political background and describes herself as “the first person I knew to vote Conservative”.

Gillian Keegan is facing a battle to retain her Chichester seat in the face of a surge from the Lib Dems - Jeff Gilbert for The Telegraph

She has found herself representing leafy Chichester on the south coast – a far cry from her origins in the North West – after first winning the seat in 2017.

But she is now facing an uphill battle to hold onto the constituency which is being relentlessly targeted by the Liberal Democrats as part of their assault on the Blue Wall.

A recent MRP poll carried out by YouGov predicts Sir Ed Davey’s party will seize the town on July 4, making Ms Keegan one of the highest profile Tory casualties.

She is upbeat as she speaks from her utilitarian office near Chichester’s centre, where a cup of Pret coffee rests on a “Gillian’s Pub Tour” beer mat.

As a leading centrist within the party and one of its best communicators, she has been tipped by some as a possible unity candidate in a future leadership race.

She is bluntly honest about the dire state of things for her party, openly saying of the polls that “all of them look pretty bad at the moment”.

Those predictions of a Tory wipeout have been “setting the narrative of the election”, she says, in a way that has been clearly unhelpful to the party’s prospects.

The sliver of hope she finds is that there are still many undecided voters out there, though she acknowledges many are Conservatives who are “wavering”.

She says that she has not personally been challenged on the election betting scandal while canvassing voters, but accepts that “it has cut through” with the public.

Ms Keegan is also not shy about acknowledging that, after 14 years in power, the Tories will need to reconnect with angry voters after the election.

The party must not descend into infighting over whether to tack to the Right or the Centre, she says, but instead start listening more to those it wishes to serve.

“In terms of the party and where it goes it doesn’t really matter what we say, we have to go where the electorate is,” she insists.

Country ‘will have buyer’s remorse’

“The only point of a political party is to make an offer to the country that is going to serve the country’s needs. We need to make sure that we’re not sleepwalking into socialism.

“If the country does, they’ll have buyer’s remorse very quickly and we need to be there to pick up the pieces as quickly as possible. That is our job.”

She suggests that Sir Keir will quickly run into trouble if he wins power because he is a “follower” not a leader, pointing to his “disgraceful” treatment of Rosie Duffield.

He has not shown “a single drop of leadership” on gender issues, she says, adding that “he still hasn’t got himself into a place where he’s clear that biological sex matters”.

Ms Keegan is also adamant that a post-election tie-up with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is not the answer to the Conservatives’ problems.

She suggests that voters would not warm to such a Right-wing pact, which has been openly proposed by some of her colleagues.

“There’s a huge difference between pub politics – somebody you’d want to have a pint with and have a chat with - and someone you’d want to govern the country. They really are quite different in the public’s mind as well,” she says.

A Labour spokesman said that the money raised from charging VAT on private school fees will “deliver a brilliant state education for children” by paying for more than 6,500 new teachers.

He added: “Independent schools have raised fees above inflation for well over a decade and do not have to pass Labour’s proposed change on to parents.”

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