SIR – So Marc Bayliss believes Labour’s educational proposals for fee-paying schools represent “the politics of envy over common sense” (September 26) but his arguments are unproven assertions that deliberately don’t explain the real issues involved.

Harold Wilsonincluded measures in the Labour Party’s 1964 manifesto that are similar to the proposals arising from the Party’s 2019 Conference.

What Labour will introduce are measures to redress the obscene privileges that fee-paying schools receive; measures that will ensure equality and fairness in the educational sector.

Currently this doesn’t exist. Most fair-minded people will agree that it is grossly unfair for fee-paying schools to receive £200million in government subsidies, not to pay their fair share of tax because they hide behind their charitable status, and not to pay VAT on school fees.

Three times more money is spent on a child attending a fee-paying school as opposed to a state school, and yet 93 per cent of the population do not attend fee-paying schools.

At the same time, the schools budget, has withered under the Tories.

Marc Bayliss and his absentee boss, MP Robin Walker, know that school funding per pupil has fallen, particularly since 2015, the year the National Funding formula was introduced.

To defend the right of choice for parents to send their children to fee-paying schools claiming that “it puts more money in the funding pot to educate children in the state sector”, is perverse and deliberately disingenuous.

Typically Marc Bayliss ignores the plight of the overwhelming number of hard-working families in Worcester who will never have any choice over the type of school their children attend.Shame on you Marc Bayliss for a poorly disguised argument in support of the privileged and wealthy.

Paul Walters

Chair, Worcester Constituency Labour Party