Continuity of Education Allowance is a crucial scheme for military families (Image: Getty)
With the threat of a wider war in the Middle East and multiple drone attacks on our heroic Ukrainian allies in Kyiv over the past week, I believe we must back our Armed Forces to the hilt. Why, then, has the new Labour government still not announced an exemption for Armed Forces families from their tax on private education?
and his comrades are continuing with plans to punish deployed service personnel who send their children to UK boarding schools.
I have written previously in the Daily Express about my campaign to overturn this senseless measure.
The Continuity of Education Allowance (CEA) is a crucial scheme that thousands of military families rely on. The funding supports them to send their children to boarding schools in the UK whilst they are serving abroad.
Whilst it does not cover the full cost of the fees, it is a lifeline for those families. It ensures a continuous education for their children, rather than moving schools every couple of years and severely disrupting their education as parents get new deployments, serving their nation.
Placing VAT on school fees would hit service families hard – as the allowance, as it stands, will not make up the difference.
This is an ill-conceived and purely ideological move which I fear will prevent far too many children from enjoying the opportunities independent schools offer, and that so many parents work tirelessly to afford.
These people are soldiers, sailors, airmen doing crucial and immensely brave work to protect our country. Some diplomats also rely on the scheme, to support their families when they are deployed to particularly hazardous locations.
The least should do is not make their lives any more difficult.
As such, I have been asking the Government to exempt these families from this VAT measure for months.
Their response to me so far has been the same each time: to wait for the spending review.
The wait is causing enormous anxiety for military families, many of whom have told me their fears that sending their children to boarding school will simply become unaffordable for them.
Some have even said as a consequence of this policy they feel they will be forced to quit their Armed Forces role.
That is why I was encouraged to see promising words from Defence Secretary John Healey earlier this month.
(As a Conservative peer I am willing to praise a Labour minister here – I want to work across the party divide to solve this issue).
Healey appears to recognise not only how important this issue is to the military families who rely on this support – but also how critical it is for the government not to do anything that would negatively impact the recruitment and retention of those serving in our forces as our world gets rapidly more dangerous.
The Defence Secretary, who said he was ‘looking hard’ at the problem, and recognises how important it is to service personnel, also rightly said the government must ‘do better to keep the best of those who serve in our forces and do better across the range to recruit those who can serve in our forces’.
I am sure this is the position of the officials in his department – the Ministry of Defence – and the military top brass, too.
Healey’s words are certainly a step in the right direction. But they are at this point unfortunately nothing more than just that – words.
Ultimately, the decision over whether or not armed forces personnel relying on the CEA will be exempted from VAT rests with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.
Her nickname, ‘Rachel Thieves’, appears to be sticking.
The Treasury has been consistently tight-lipped on this matter – refusing to commit to anything before the spending review concludes. But military and diplomatic families need clarity now.
The Chancellor should take the same position as the Defence Secretary and urgently confirm service and diplomatic personnel will not be subjected to paying this tax.
It could be easily cleared up in an announcement at next month’s Budget, or before.
With army manpower levels reaching record lows, the Government would be betraying the safety of our country by doing anything to reduce numbers further and deter people from serving.
It is critical that John Healey wins this battle in Whitehall, and I will continue pressing the Government on this until the confirmation these families are so desperately seeking is given.
In the meantime, forces families are in the dark over whether this provision will be available for their children – just as the international security situation could boil over into war on multiple fronts. Surely Labour ministers have more common sense than that?
- Lord Kempsell is a Conservative Member of the House of Lords