Be careful what you wish for, while I would sure have loved to have had all my training paid for by the tax-payer, lowering the financial (& intellectual) hurdles would simply result in even more pilots chasing jobs and the subsequent deflation of pilots remuneration packages.
The argument that arts graduates are sponsored by the Government doesn’t have any weight either – two wrongs don’t make a right. The job of government is to distribute wealth and, in my opinion, it would be an irresponsible dereliction of their duty to be supporting private industry in this way.
Asking for a reduction in VAT is, I feel, a moral argument, but then morals bear no relation to taxation policy. The single biggest change I would support in the UK flight training industry would be to allow students to deduct training expenses from their income tax. This would encourage the more motivated career-changers and discourage the younger students to take out such enormous unsecured debt. It would also help to level the playing field between those who earned their money for training and those who simply had it paid for by parents.
And flying doesn’t come close to comparison with a degree. Whilst my flying exams weren’t easy, they only required a fraction of the cognitive ability that my engineering degree required.