A recruitment and retention crisis in the armed forces will grow unless the government exempts military families from paying VAT on private school fees, insiders have warned.
Sky News understands that more and more families are raising concerns internally about the “damaging” policy after the chancellor failed to offer sufficient protections in her budget.
They say a promise to increase an allowance funded by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that helps to cover the cost of school fees does not go far enough, and that highly experienced personnel – officers and other ranks – will quit if Rachel Reeves does not perform a U-turn.
Such a loss in skills would weaken UK defences at a time of rising threats, the insiders say.
A soldier with a child at boarding school, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “I will have to leave military service, as I will not inflict another school move on my child.”
He said: “On one side, the chancellor wore a poppy during her budget announcement, and then proceeded to deal a damaging blow to members of His Majesty’s Armed Forces by not including a simple exemption.”
An army spouse, who asked for her identity to be protected because her husband is serving, said: “This is people’s children. This is people’s money in their pocket.”
She told Sky News: “If there is a nice job offer outside the military… that is going to look way, way more attractive than it did a few months ago. The army is in a recruitment and retention crisis, so why would you do something like this?”
Offering a sense of the scale of the potential impact, the Army Families Federation, an independent charity, said nearly 70% of families that shared evidence with it about the policy said without protection from the full cost of the VAT they would consider quitting the service.
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