Question Time audience member makes cheeky case for why private schools should be closed

A Question Time audience member had his fellow audience members laughing after he made a cheeky case for closing private schools.

Labour wants to end private schools' charitable status which gives them tax breaks but the Tories disagree. It was this issue that was among those the Question Time panel debated yesterday in Aberystwyth, Wales.

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One man was definitely in favour of changing the system and gave a funny reason as to why.

He said: "Not all but most of our recent prime ministers and most of the cabinets have all had private education. When we consider the many disasters that they've visited on us, is that not a better excuse to just close the damn things down?"

The audience laughed and cheered in response.

He's not wrong. Rishi Sunak went to Winchester College, an elite public school, while previous prime ministers Boris Johnson and David Cameron are Eton alumni.

Meanwhile, other privately educated members of the current cabinet include Chancellor Jeremy Hunt (Charterhouse School in Surrey), Foreign Secretary James Cleverly (Colfe’s School in Greenwich, south-east London), and Home Secretary Suella Braverman (Heathfield School in Pinner, north-west London).

We'll leave you to judge all of their records.

Elsewhere on the show, Welsh Labour MP Vaughan Gething said the prime minister was "out of touch" to continue private schools' charitable status.

"The question is really about, should we, all of us in this room, be helping to fund private schools? And the answer is no."

But Tory MP David Davies disagreed and called shutting down private schools a "class war crusade" and said private schools were good employers.

The debate rumbles on with all the vigour of a school debating society - private or state.

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