The video proof Rachel Reeves isn’t her family’s only class warrior who’s out to get private schools: Labour minister’s sister reveals her number one priority if she was PM would be to abolish them completely_Nhy
The Labour minister sister of Chancellor Rachel Reeves has revealed that her number one priority if she was ever prime minister would be ‘to abolish private schools’.
Ellie Reeves, whose older sibling has controversially levied 20 per cent VAT on school fees, made her comments in a podcast.
The 44-year-old, who is chairman of the Labour Party, was asked: ‘If you were prime minister for the day without any repercussions, what would you do?’
Laughing and giggling, she answered without hesitation: ‘Abolish private schools because I think they divide communities.
‘I think that education should provide a level playing field for everyone, irrespective of family background or wealth or anything like that.’
Her comments came on the Meet the MPs podcast in 2019, when she was interviewed about life as MP for Lewisham West and East Dulwich.
She has since become one of the most senior members of Labour as party chairman and Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office. Her older sister Rachel, 46, has enjoyed her own meteoric rise to head the Treasury.
Labour bigwigs have consistently denied accusations that their VAT levy on fees is ideologically driven, insisting instead that their sums show it will raise funds for the state sector.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves (left) has controversially levied 20 per cent VAT on private school fees
Her sister Ellie Reeves (right), who is chair of the Labour Party, told a podcast in 2019 that she was in favour of scraping private schools altogether because they ‘divide communities’
The historic Fulneck School (pictured) in the Chancellor’s constituency of Pudsey, west Yorkshire, has been running for three centuries but will now close after becoming ‘financially unviable’
But the Chancellor, who faces an unprecedented legal challenge to her VAT policy from affected parents in the High Court next week, previously told New Statesman magazine in a joint 2023 interview with Ellie that private school parents are ‘snobs’.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has also refused to visit a single independent school in her official capacity, dismissing the 550,000 children educated in them as the ‘7 per cent’.
The Reeves sisters are ‘old girls’ of what is now one of the best state schools in the UK, and currently ranked in the Top 100 for student progress. Harris Girls’ Academy Bromley, originally Cator Park School for Girls, is a leading London academy.
Its reputation means it is one of the hardest schools to win a place at in the borough, where the number of children gaining their first-place choice this year has already fallen to under seven in ten. The school, which was deemed ‘satisfactory’ by inspectors when the pair attended in the 1990s, flourished when it became an academy.
Ironically, Labour’s planned reforms mean academies are at risk of coming back under state control, leading to accusations Labour is abandoning the academy programme and ‘dumbing down’ schools.
Meanwhile, the Chancellor’s own flagship education policy faces a challenge on human rights and equality grounds at next week’s High Court three-day judicial review. Since the policy was levied around 20 schools – including one in the Chancellor’s own constituency, Fulneck School in Pudsey, Yorkshire – have shut or face closure because of the new tax.
Thousands of children have also left the independent sector seeking state school places.
Last night shadow schools minister Neil O’Brien told The Mail on Sunday it was ‘awful to see footage of children in tears because they are forced to move school when their parents, who are not wealthy, are being hit hard by Labour’s tax – and then to see the chairman of the Labour Party giggling and laughing about it’.
He added: ‘There are 100,000 children with special needs in private schools without any official recognition of their conditions and they are being particularly hard hit by this spiteful and highly political tax. It’s pretty bleak.’
