My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for the answer she gave on my amendment. I had a lot of sympathy for Amendment 149, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. If we are to require home educators to provide a suitable education, we should make the same requirement of local authorities. What is important is that all children get a suitable education, and we should not accept backsliding by the state on that.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, would expect, as editor of the Good Schools Guide and a product of Eton, I do not have any sympathy for her amendment. It just seems self-defeating. If you take away the charitable exemption so that independent schools start paying rates, they will do that much less charitable work. That charitable benefit goes straight through to charitable work; the sufferers will be the people currently benefiting from the charity. It will all come back to the state because, although the local authorities may get some additional money from business rates, the state will find itself educating a lot more pupils who are currently being educated elsewhere, not at its expense. The same applies to VAT, but in spades. It appears merely to be an unsatisfactory solution to a long-running niggle. This Government’s approach to try to get the two sectors working together, integrated and benefiting each other, so that they become part of a unified system in rather the way that the health service works with private providers, seems a much better idea. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.