Letters: Labour wants to destroy the traditions that bind rural people together
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SIR – In the 1980s and 1990s, my father was the Conservative deputy leader, and later leader, of Derbyshire County Council – then the most Marxist in the country.
He instilled into me that one of the rules of communism was: “Suburbanise the countryside and you have the country where you want it – because country people have to think for themselves.”
This is what Labour’s attack on hunting has always been about: undermining and destroying the traditional things that bind rural people of all backgrounds together. It has nothing to do with cute, furry animals.
Timothy Morgan-Owen
Melbourne, Derbyshire
SIR – The only policies that Sir Keir Starmer has confirmed are a ban on fox hunting and adding VAT to private education.
Jeremy Corbyn must be so proud.
Graham Butler
Loughton, Essex
SIR – You describe the Hunting Act 2004 as “bad for the rural economy and a waste of police resources” (Leading Article, February 20).
This is true, but there is another crucial point. The Act was designed to improve wild-animal welfare, and it is on those terms that it should be judged. We now know that the law has been a disaster for the quarry species. Since 2021, Jim Barrington – a former director of the League Against Cruel Sports – and I have spent some 60 days in the field interviewing people at the sharp end of countryside management to assess the impact of the ban.
Foxes are now being killed in greater numbers, often using methods that lead to more suffering, not less. Restrictions that limit stag hunts to the use of two hounds mean many fewer casualty deer – such as animals hit by cars – are being found and dispatched. Greater concentrations of deer as a result of the Act have led to a rise in bovine tuberculosis. The ban also led to an increase in illegal hare coursing.
You conclude that the Hunting Act “is not going to be repealed and is settled”. But surely bad law needs to be repealed. Now that we have definitive proof that the Hunting Act has been a disaster for wild-animal welfare, it should be replaced.
Instead of banning trail hunting and persecuting the innocent, as it intends, the Labour Party should take an evidence-based approach and consider restoring hunting with hounds for the sake of the hunted species.
Charlie Pye-Smith
London SW19
SIR – With a general election imminent, Labour’s plan to “eliminate” fox hunting shows the party’s priorities.
Sir Keir Starmer is attempting to appease the militant Left of his party, at the expense of many rural communities. Though Labour’s core voters are concentrated in urban centres, the party must not neglect rural people.
If, as is widely expected, Labour wins a majority at the next election, Sir Keir must represent the whole country, supporting the livelihoods of people in all walks of life. He must work with rural communities rather than against them. Hunting is an integral part of rural life, and these communities have had to adapt significantly after the ban. If Labour presses forward with its plans, outlawing trail-hunting, it will ultimately kill off a vital social and economic aspect of country life.
At a time when rural poverty is getting significantly worse, Sir Keir must drop his blatant class-war rhetoric or risk further alienating the already struggling rural world.
Caspar Bridge
Sherborne, Dorset
SIR – I’ve voted Labour all my adult life and was a local branch secretary for a while, but I haven’t the faintest idea of what it stands for now – apart from being “decisive”.
Michael Heaton
Warminster, Wiltshire
Face-to-face working
SIR – I am now retired as an active company proprietor, but if my staff had been “working” from home (Letters, February 19), it would have been devastatingly inefficient. The benefit of face-to-face communication between colleagues is immeasurable. If I were still in business, I would pay a bonus – maybe even 20 per cent – to those staff who worked from the office.
Mac Fearnehough
Holmesfield, Derbyshire
SIR – Many employers have reduced their office space, so if all their employees arrived on any given day, they couldn’t be accommodated.
Howard Buttery
Whalley, Lancashire
SIR – A browse through engineering job vacancies in this country will show numerous positions requiring “10-plus years of experience managing multi-million pound projects”, yet they offer the same as graduate salaries at European firms. I started my career in the Netherlands for nearly double what was being offered in Britain for more senior positions.
Dr Zander Rewse-Davies
Smilde, Drenthe, Netherlands
SIR – Mattie Brignal (Money, February 18) says that in 1997, when Gordon Brown was Labour’s chancellor of the Exchequer, “little attention” was paid to his removal of the tax relief on pension contributions.
I disagree. Attention was certainly paid by the thousands of people with private pension plans – which should have made a generous addition to state pensions. The change has forced my partner and me, now in our 70s, to take part-time jobs to supplement our income, as our pensions are worth about £100 per month.
Mr Brown’s move never went unnoticed, and for it now to be recognised as an “enormous mistake” merely adds insult to injury. Indeed, at the time, both unions and employers, as well as hundreds of others – myself included – wrote to him to protest.
For many, Mr Brown will always be remembered as the chancellor who sold our gold reserves and reneged on his promises to working people.
Pam Farquhar
Ludlow, Shropshire
Humph at Oundle
SIR – It was also at Oundle (Letters, February 19) that Humphrey Lyttelton, the celebrated jazz trumpeter and broadcaster, performed his first ever concert for a school. Afterwards the then headmaster, Richard Knight, asked me to introduce him to Humph.
I recall two tall men chatting amiably, surrounded by Humph’s band members and clouds of cigar smoke.
Eddie Lewisohn
London N6
Ads as art
SIR – Alan Edwards (Letters, February 19) rightly bemoans the decline of television advertisements that were “memorable, clever and enjoyable”.
However, I’d draw attention to the current ad for Cunard, which features a voiceover by Alan Watts. It’s an absolute cracker – a work of real creativity which seems to take its audience seriously, unlike so many these days.
Rob Quayle
West Drayton, Middlesex
SIR – For me, the only advertisement worth watching is the one for Nationwide, featuring the actor Dominic West. It is not only amusing, but also makes a valid point about the closure of high-street bank branches.
Patricia Essex
Hedge End, Hampshire
Death of Navalny
SIR – Nobody can fail to have been moved by the pitiful sight of Alexei Navalny’s mother shuffling through the Siberian snow to demand no more than the sight of her son’s body. Lord Cameron talks of “consequences” for this atrocious murder (report, telegraph.co.uk, February 17). We urgently need to hear what he means.
Cameron Morice
Reading, Berkshire
Post Office pushback
SIR – I was a sub-postmaster from 2000 to 2013 and suffered Horizon problems (report, February 20). Horizon not only reported shortfalls, but also excess cash holdings in equal proportions.
My Post Office training was abysmal and the “helpline” poor. When I insisted on being given a call reference, for instance, call handlers were often reluctant to provide one.
When the system reported a large loss, I told managers that my post office would be closed until an auditor had looked into the problem. This happened, and I survived unscathed.
Peter Lacey
Lapford, Devon
Screen addict
SIR – My 14-year-old grandson tells me that, aged 72, I am addicted to my mobile phone (Letters, February 20). Should I be worried?
Jeremy Walker
London WC1
Falling birth rates are making Britain poorer
SIR – Population decline (News Focus, February 17) is indeed one of the most pressing issues facing humanity and the economic repercussions of falling birth rates must not be underestimated.
A peer-reviewed scientific paper has shown that a UK-born child’s economic value is more than £700,000 through tax and pension contributions over their lifetime. Having just fallen into recession, Britain can no longer afford to ignore the detrimental impact of declining birth rates and an ageing population. The recent examples of New Zealand’s lowest-recorded birth rates, Seoul subsidising egg-freezing in a bid to boost fertility, and Emmanuel Macron’s pro-fertility and pro-birth policies in France demonstrate that this is an urgent, global crisis.
We need a multifaceted approach to boosting birth rates, from fertility education in schools all the way through to testing, better workplace support and a top-down approach whereby government departments share the costs of pro-fertility policies.
In Britain, the Department for Health and Social Care, the Department of Work and Pensions, the Women and Equalities Committee and the Treasury all have roles to play. Measures should include improving the accessibility and provision of fertility treatments and abolishing the IVF postcode lottery. We need a collaborative approach from leaders to secure the country’s economic future amid population uncertainty.
Professor Geeta Nargund
Senior NHS consultant and medical director, Create Fertility and abc ivf
London EC2
SIR – In your report (“NHS spending on private-sector scans triples in five years”, telegraph.co.uk, February 18), you refer to an increase in spending by the NHS on outsourced radiology.
However, outsourced is not the same as private sector. Here at the Epilepsy Society we have an MRI scanner whose purchase was funded by generous donors. We make scans on this equipment available to the NHS at, broadly, cost price.
This means that using our equipment is effectively cheaper for the NHS than using its own, when you take into account the capital costs of purchasing it. I suspect other charities do the same.
Clare Pelham
Chief executive, Epilepsy Society
Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire
Desperate measures to avoid military housing
SIR – My wife and I both grew up in military families. In 2022, just after we had moved from a quarter into our own home, she said she couldn’t follow me on my postings as she wouldn’t live in another quarter (Letters, February 20). I agreed. The options: commute weekly or monthly, or leave. I left.
Wg Cdr Stephen Butler RAF (retd)
Thurston, Suffolk
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