Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, insisted that the closure of Alton School, a private school in Hampshire, was the result of a “long-standing issue” and not Labour's planned VAT attack on the independent sector.
She told Sky News: “To be clear in terms of this particular example, the school itself noted that they had been suffering from falling grades for years and had not been able to turn that around. So I'm sorry that this is the case, but this is a long-standing problem that the individual school faces.
“Furthermore, if you look at the work that the Institute for Fiscal Studies did, the respected independent organisation, they concluded that Labour's policies would net a net gain of £1.3 billion to £1.5 billion, and that we that would invest directly in state schools.
“We would ensure that we get an additional 6,500 teachers. We know there are real pressures at the moment and too many children are being taught by non-specialists because of the failure to recruit and retain brilliant teachers… My priority as Education Secretary in a Labor government would be to drive better investment directly into our state schools, because that's where the vast majority of our children go to school.”
She also confirmed that there would be no increases in income tax or national insurance if the country won the general election
“We believe it is incredibly important that we provide stability to the economy and that is why our focus will also be on growing the economy so that we can also invest more in our public services.”