DAME Suzi Leather, one of New Labour's favourite quango queens, took a pasting from the elected grunts of the House of Commons. Dame Suzi chairs the charity commission and - with the encouragement of privately-educated class warrior Ed Balls - intends to stop some posh schools claiming charitable tax breaks. But how can this be done? Er, don't ask her!
Vain Dame Suzi, in devoré-style top and with a chic, feathered hairdo, radiated gushy self-satisfaction when she and colleagues arrived at Westminster's Portcullis House. She fixed the mainly middle-aged, male MPs of the public administration committee with a sultry smile, pulled her top tight and adopted a tone of husky subservience.
This only lasted a while, mind you. When the questions started getting tough, her veneer began to flake off and Dame Suzi was left gasping like a winded boxer.
The committee has numerous proud lefties - just the sort of people who might be expected to cheer an attack on public schools. Luton North's Kelvin Hopkins said the current charity tax perks enjoyed by independent schools were a case of "the rich wanting to buy a better education for their children at the expense of the taxpayer". But Hopkins feared Dame Suzi was being too "fuzzy" about her proposals.
The charity commission says private schools will have to "demonstrate public benefit". But what exactly does this mean? Sharing their games fields with local children and opening their music rooms to hoi polloi? Lending teachers to the local comp? Or will they perhaps agree to educate children with social problems? It seems only fair that the likes of Eton and Harrow (not to mention less successful institutions) should have an idea of what they are supposed to do in order to keep their tax status.
Asked by the committee's chairman, Tony Wright (Lab, Cannock Chase), to cough up some firm proposals for this "public benefit" test, Dame Suzi flapped her hands and shrugged a svelte shoulder. "What do charities have to do?" begged Wright. "Are we going to know what you think?" Dame Suzi, by way of reply, could only waffle.
The commission's chief executive, Andrew Hind, talked about "eradicating" schools which do not take the public benefit test "seriously". "I want it absolutely at the front of their minds, " said Hind, a bookish little man without much obvious sense of humour.
The main hint from the commission so far is that private schools could earn their public-hearted credentials by giving scholarships to pupils from the state sector. Paul Flynn (Lab, Newport West) was not impressed. He argued that bursaries could cream off the "pace setters" from state schools and thus do "enormous damage to local comprehensives".
Dame Suzi blinked. She and her team, using increasingly legalistic terms, mumbled about "advancing education". Wright, becoming itchy, told her she had to produce a firm idea of what "public interest" meant. Dame Suzi: "It's not for me to say."
But of course it is for her to say. She and her buddies are going to be the very people making these decisions. When Wright said scholarships could well be a bad idea, Dame Suzi gave a half-hearted defence. Wright: "Are you saying that the effect a private school has on the state school down the road is not something you will take into consideration?" Dame Suzi, limply: "I don't think any of it is straightforward."
What a mess. The more the charity commission obfuscates and dithers, the more difficult it will be to judge which schools are "charitable" - and the more likely it becomes that private schools will appeal successfully against the commission's rulings. Indeed, who could blame them for doing so, given how badly Dame Suzi is running her show?
'Gavel Basher'