Surely common decency should dictate that if free-at-the-point-of-need applies to healthcare, then it should also apply to the education of an eight-year-old with cancer. It really does take a special sort of heartlessness for a hospital to allow a little boy fighting for his life to be told he can鈥檛 have classes with his friend because of some ideological/financial stance taken by petty bureaucrats. Private schools, which operate on a not-for-profit basis, can鈥檛 stop paying a bit of a teacher鈥檚 salary because one pupil is on long-term sickness absence, or to expect a missing pupil discount for their maintenance costs. And as new George Watson鈥檚 head Lisa Kerr has pointed out, her school is teaching at least one senior pupil from a state school unable to provide tutoring for one of their subjects, and the family is not asked for payment. But what is being forgotten is that private school parents have paid twice, for school fees and through their taxes from which they receive no rebate for not taking up the place the state is legally obliged to provide, until their worst nightmare unfolds and their child contracts a potentially fatal illness and needs schooling in an Edinburgh hospital. The SNP鈥檚 bedtime revolutionary Finlay McFarlane, who defended this policy at last week鈥檚 education committee, should be ashamed of himself. Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Lothian