Letter to the editor

	Dane Clouston was recently been elected to the national executive committee of the Liberal party and was formerly Liberal party candidate for Newbury Published in the Times, 27/12/2008

Don't give tax relief on private school fees

Sir,  John Lethbridge (letter Dec 23) says there is a strong case for tax relief on the luxury expenditure on private school fees, based on a parallel with the inefficiency and corruption shown in Communist Russia without competition from the private sector.  He is stretching a point in the interests of those who will be forced by the economic climate to take their children out of private schools and to put them into state schools. 

There is a very strong countervailing case for putting VAT on private education in order to encourage this process and to discourage more people from opting out of state education.  The more articulate, influential and relatively wealthy parents there [are] who become directly concerned with the standards of state schools, the better for all concerned.  They will then be more prepared to pay the tax and spend the money that is necessary to improve those standards for all.

The standards that must be improved for all include the provision for sport that was so drastically and unfortunately reduced at the time of the teachers' strike while my children were at state schools - a rather unsporting contrast of which they became keenly aware when they moved in the opposite direction from state schools to private schools for sixth form.

DANE CLOUSTON
Stadhampton, Oxon