Times letters: The pensions triple lock and stretched public finances

Sir, You report (News, Oct 18) that in his drive to overhaul the nation’s finances and restore our standing in the financial markets, Jeremy Hunt may abolish the commitment to cap social care costs for those unfortunate enough to develop an illness not covered by the NHS. He has already abolished the social care levy proposed by Rishi Sunak.

Whichever way you look at it, £86,000, the amount suggested as the cap, is a significant amount of money. It doesn’t fall on everyone, just the unlucky. I wonder if a levy of a couple of basis points on every estate, including those below the nil rate band, could go some way to creating a social care fund to help local authorities and the NHS provide the assistance needed by so many people. At the moment, if your assets exceed £23,000 you can’t even set against tax the cost of getting your bottom wiped if you can’t do it yourself.
Elizabeth Balsom
London SW15

Sir, Daniel Finkelstein is right to conclude that the Conservative Party has strayed from its roots in recent years, developing a tendency to “disrupt rather than to conserve” (Oct 18). It is hardly surprising to learn that a significant number of voters in the UK will no longer be voting Tory. However, the damage resulting from Tory mismanagement is not confined to the UK, given that its international reputation has taken a battering in recent years. In addition to the failure of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss to honour an international treaty while seeking to change parts of it unilaterally, the world is now witnessing the reluctance of both the US and India to engage with the UK on potential trade deals.

If the UK is to restore its reputation its government needs to replicate its response to the mini-budget debacle, first by apologising (taking its lead from the contrition expressed by Steve Baker over behaviour during Brexit) and then by embarking on a damage-limitation exercise.
Graham Davies
Bogotá, Colombia

Sir, Michael Gove positions himself as Renaissance Man but his comments that the Tory party finds itself in hell after which comes purgatory and finally paradise (News, Oct 18) shows a weak grasp of Christian orthodoxy. Purgation is available to all en route to paradise but there is no way back from hell.
Tony Wilson
Biron, France

CROWN AFFAIR
Sir, Sir John Major is not alone in his concerns that the latest series of The Crown will present an inaccurate and hurtful account of history (News, Oct 17). Indeed, the closer the drama comes to our present times, the more freely it seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism.

While many will recognise The Crown for the brilliant but fictionalised account of events that it is, I fear that a significant number of viewers, particularly overseas, may take its version of history as being wholly true. Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series — that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence — this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.

No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged. Despite this week stating publicly that The Crown has always been a “fictionalised drama” the programme makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode.

The time has come for Netflix to reconsider — for the sake of a family and a nation so recently bereaved, as a mark of respect to a sovereign who served her people so dutifully for 70 years, and to preserve its reputation in the eyes of its British subscribers.
Dame Judi Dench
London W1

Sir, I wonder what the spokeswoman for Netflix would feel if there were broadcast worldwide “a fictional dramatisation imagining what could have happened behind closed doors” of her own household. Would she rely on viewers to see it as fiction or might she see it as an unwarranted intrusion and misrepresentation?
John Hodge
Reading

ROYAL PROCLAMATION
Sir, Your report “Edwards: I learnt of Queen’s death 10 seconds before telling the nation” (News, Oct 18) is in marked contrast to the account of the report of the death of her grandfather George V. My uncle Hugh Venables worked for the BBC and reported that Alvar Lidell, the celebrated newsreader, had been heard in the gents’ loo rehearsing repeatedly: “The King is dead. Long live the King.”
Robert Venables
Petersfield, Hampshire

POSTAL STRIKES HURT SMALL BUSINESSES
Sir, In recent months we have seen a rise in industrial action as many workers press for higher wages. As leaders and representatives of thousands of UK businesses, we completely understand the challenges so many people are facing. However, we must do everything we can to avoid making a bad situation worse.

The escalation of the planned disruption to postal services over the coming weeks could be a body blow to UK small businesses. The 19 days of planned industrial action coincide with the busiest trading season of the year in the run up to Black Friday and Christmas. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses and online retailers depend on Royal Mail and its army of postal workers to help them through this key trading season. These strikes will only damage the economy at the time we need it most.

That is why we are asking both sides in this dispute to get back round the table and look at alternatives for resolving, or delaying, this industrial action. Otherwise the Christmas cashflow of hundreds of thousands of small businesses will be in even greater peril than it already is.
Murray Lambell, vice-president and general manager, eBay UK; Martin McTague, national chairman, Federation of Small Businesses; Shevaun Haviland, director-general, British Chambers of Commerce; Michelle Ovens CBE, founder, Small Business Saturday

HS2 BENEFITS CLEAR
Sir, I was astonished to read several local politicians from Cheshire argue that HS2 should be scrapped (letter, Oct 18). Since I moved to Cheshire two years ago one of the most frustrating aspects has been the reduced connectivity to London due to the travails of Avanti West Coast.

To obtain the fullest benefits from HS2, what is required is to consider onwards connectivity from HS2 at Crewe to Chester and North Wales — a rail corridor identified last year by the government’s Union Connectivity Review as being ripe for electrification.

It is deeply depressing to read that local politicians want to deny their electorate the economic opportunities that come with enhanced connections to the rest of the country.
Craig Prescott
Chester, Cheshire

Sir, Critics of HS2 seem to miss the point. Among the changes vital to meet Britain’s carbon and energy reduction targets will be a significant switch of goods and passenger traffic from road to electrified rail. Trunk rail routes, particularly the west coast main line from London through the Midlands to Manchester, have almost no spare capacity. Fast trains take up a disproportionate share of that capacity and only by taking these off the current network can room be made for more freight. Far from cutting back on HS2 plans, the projected network should be extended from the Midlands to Yorkshire and a Trans-Pennine route built.
Richard Woodhams
Chichester, W Sussex

RAF PILOTS IN CHINA
Sir, The news that former RAF pilots are training the Chinese (News, Oct 18) is a matter for serious concern but ways do exist to prevent such actions. In 1819 the Foreign Enlistment Act was passed to stop British veterans of the Spanish Peninsular War from volunteering for service with the insurgent armies and navies of the fledgling independent states of Latin America. It had little effect, however.

Less well known is its successor, the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870, which aimed to restrict Britons serving with Prussian forces against those of France. The British government was determined to maintain a neutral stance, given its policy of maintaining good relations with France, and so it was made a crime to serve in the forces of any power fighting against any state with which the UK was at peace. Updated legislation was used again in the Spanish Civil War.

I wonder whether new legislation is needed. The 1870 Act (with some modification) is still on the statute book. The recent Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act of 2019 bans British citizens from travelling to specific designated areas and could perhaps be amended.
Professor Tim Connell
Gresham College, London EC1

COLLECTOR’S ITEM
Sir, I must disagree with Jonathan Riley of HM Treasury’s Tax Professionals’ Forum (letter, Oct 19) in respect of the Office of Tax Simplification. In a Times interview with its chairwoman several years ago she explained that the office existed to simplify tax collection rather than tax. The difference is subtle but critical.
Nick Hortin
Houston, Renfrewshire

THE LAST LAUGH
Sir, Daniel Kaner (letter, Oct 19) is unduly pessimistic about proving that sales of nitrous oxide are illegal. When I sat as a crown court recorder, defendants who made unrealistic claims about having 1,000 canisters at music festivals for personal consumption or for making puddings got short shrift from juries.
Robert Rhodes KC
London WC2

ENJOY THE LIE-IN
Sir, Trevor Harley comments that he, like others who suffer from seasonal affective disorder, are disadvantaged by the autumn clock changes (letter, Oct 18). However, the changing of the clocks has no effect whatsoever on the total amount of daylight, just its timing. Professor Harley just needs to get up and go to bed later.
Martin Pettinger
Keymer, W Sussex

CAVEAT EMPTOR
Sir, When the last big inflationary run kicked off in the early 1970s my parents followed some advice on how to hedge against its effects. Fifty years on, as I clear out their house, I find the antique dining chairs that were bound to appreciate are completely worthless. They at least served a useful purpose, being sat upon for many a meal, unlike the similarly depreciated postage stamps from around the world that were marketed as collectable items.
Robert Thomas
Sandwich, Kent