3/31/2008 8:40:00 AM
The Sunday Times 30 March
Dame Suzi Leather tells why she’s asking the public to tell her how fee-paying schools can prove they deserve their charitable status – and the tax breaks that go with it Are you living near a private school? Would you like to use its swimming pool, or rowing lake, or chapel? Do you fancy the idea of your child getting free Latin lessons there? Or can you think of some other way the school could serve the community? It doesn’t have to be a famous school like Eton or Harrow – you might live near a small one that isn’t a household name. But if you have any good wheezes – Suzi Leather would like to hear from you. Leather, 51, is the woman at the sharp end of one of the most contentious Labour policies, an attack on the financial basis of private schools that some see as little more than class war. When the government recently changed the law – scrapping the automatic and historic charitable status of private schools – it delighted leftwingers, who had long asked what on earth was charitable about schools that charge up to £28,000 a year and enable rich children to dominate top universities. Okay, some might have been set up to educate paupers, but that was centuries ago. From next spring private schools will have to prove they are still charities – by publicly detailing enough good works – if they want to keep their charitable status, which carries with it tax breaks estimated at £100m across the sector. Leather, as head of the Charity Commission, is the woman leading the organisation that will have to judge whether a school is doing enough to meet the new test. Sitting behind her desk in the commission’s London offices, she frowns as she explains why the job is so important. “At the end of the day there is a monetary value on charitable status in the form of tax breaks,” she says. “If a charity is unable to demonstrate any public benefit value but is enjoying these tax advantages, the public might well ask: is this a body that deserves this status?” And that’s why she wants to hear from you. “I am really keen to hear from anyone with views on what private schools could do to justify charitable status,” she says. “There will be a lot of ideas we have not thought of.” “We are not saying that schools have to ask parents to pay more. We are giving a range of ways schools can do this,” she says. But she does reveal that she has ruled herself out of final decision-taking about whether an individual school is allowed to remain a charity because she feels that her daughter’s position creates a potential “conflict of interest”. After a few more weeks of consultation, in July the commission will issue its final guidelines to schools. Next spring they will have to set out their charitable activities alongside the value of their tax breaks. “I think that for some this will be the first time schools have seriously sat down and thought, okay, what is it that we do do?” says Leather. She pauses. “I think it will be of considerable interest to the public.” Sun Times
Independent/ Private Sector
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