Labour have not hired any new teachers thanks to their tax raid on private schools. Guido is old enough to remember that Labour claimed the punitive tax would help fund 6,500 new teachers…
Asked how many extra teachers have been recruited as a result of VAT raised, education minister Baroness Smith couldn’t answer:
“HM Treasury published a Tax Information and Impact Note (TIIN) on applying VAT to independent school fees. The TIIN estimates that, accounting for the spending implications of any pupil movement into the state sector, the policy is expected to raise £1.7 billion per annum by 2029/30.”
Meanwhile one in five private school teachers say they have had colleagues made redundant due to Labour’s VAT on fees. School’s out…
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”