You’ll remember that when Labour said they were planning to put VAT on private school fees, some people said it would be disastrous, schools would close, and parents would be forced to put their children in, God forbid, a comprehensive. It was also claimed that VAT on school fees was a breach of the basic human right to education. But Labour resisted the most powerful lobby group in the country – irritated middle-class parents – and went ahead with the policy anyway.

A few months down the road, we’re now in a position to look at whether any of the apocalyptic predictions have come true and on the face of it, there have been effects. A number of private schools, including some in Scotland, have closed. Fettes College in Edinburgh (most famous former pupil: Tony Blair) announced this week that it’s looking at making some of its staff redundant to cut costs. And there’s also evidence that some pupils are leaving the private sector and going to the state sector instead.

To be fair, Labour never denied there would be effects. In fact, they predicted VAT on fees, introduced by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, would result in around 37,000 pupils leaving the private sector, about 6% of the UK’s private school population, and it was a fair prediction. Some parents who send their kids to private schools push the boat out financially to do it, taking out loans and remortgaging and so forth, and any increase in fees has the potential to make it unviable for them. This would appear to be what’s happening to some extent now.

But the question is not whether some pupils are leaving, the question is whether pupils leaving means the VAT policy is wrong or unfair. Earlier this year, the........

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