Sir, The establishment of a commission of “independent adjudicators” to decide asylum appeals (report, Aug 24) has panic written all over it. The government has at last realised the folly of having first tier judges whose requirement is but five years’ professional qualification. But where are the hundreds of adjudicators to suddenly appear from? Surely in an emergency the answer is to turn to recently retired senior judges, the like of whom have been proved willing to stand up to government indecision, and who possess years of experience in distinguishing fantasy from reality.
His Honour Barrington Black
London NW3
Sir, Fraser Nelson is right that Sir Keir Starmer has a very small window to resolve the small boats crisis (“Tories are the insurgents after hotel judgment”, comment, Aug 23). The prime minister must abandon his cautious lawyerly instinct and repeal the asylum system based on the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. The traditional British sympathy for the underdog has been trampled on by the costs of asylum seekers. If Labour cannot sort this out, it is Reform (and not the Tories) who stand to profit.
David Rimmer
Hertford Heath, Herts
Sir, Given that the large majority of all those claiming asylum are eventually granted the right to remain, the hotels will be emptied the sooner we can deal with outstanding asylum cases. This behoves the Home Office to put far greater resources into handling the applications. Once a migrant has the right to remain and to work legally, we have an extra source of manpower and a tax revenue stream for the Treasury.
Bill Edmead
Ashford, Kent
Sir, Your leading article (“Gloves off”, Aug 23) underplays the growing fear among many non-white people I know who feel Britain is getting more insular and hostile. Nigel Farage has a loose end of supporters who conflate diversity with the Channel boat crisis and are thus intolerant of too many people from the Global South. Yet in my international experience and global friendships, humans have often more in common than in difference. We should work harder to make a more cohesive society.
James Rorison
Inverness
Sir, We could and should take less drastic steps than those proposed by the Reform leader. We could put migrants to work to earn their keep pending processing. We could implement ID cards to make it harder to work in the black economy. We should, however, recognise that being a prosperous country at the centre of the English-speaking world will always be attractive to those less fortunate than ourselves. By requiring migrants to make a useful contribution, some of the potential for civil disorder might be alleviated.
Anthony Browne
Datchet, Berks
Sir, Your acknowledgement of the potential role of the Falkland Islands to deter illegal migrants (leading article, Aug 23) would give taxpayers a welcome benefit from the £200 million spent on building the Mount Pleasant RAF base there in 1985.
Hugh Sharp
Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex
Parole barriers
Sir, His Honour David Ticehurst (letter, Aug 22) assures readers that convicted prisoners do not have to admit guilt to secure parole. That may be the official position, but the lived experience of countless prisoners, campaigners, and legal advocates tells a different story.
I would ask: how many prisoners have been released while maintaining their innocence? Conversely, how many have been held beyond the expiry of their sentences because they refused to confess to crimes they did not commit? I doubt we will ever be privy to these figures. A prisoner maintaining innocence faces a harder task. While admission of guilt is not a formal requirement, it is difficult to demonstrate reduced risk without undertaking offence-focused treatment programmes. Therefore, in practice, denial of guilt weighs heavily against release and too often becomes the decisive factor.
Harvey Proctor
Former MP; president, Facing Allegations in Contexts of Trust;
Woolsthorpe by Belvoir, Lincs
Sir, I was a member of the Parole Board for ten years. Unlike David Ticehurst I have no problem admitting that the practical effect of saying you were not guilty is to add a significant amount of time to the period in prison. The Parole Board looks for evidence in reduction of risk. Either you show this by a long time in prison without drugs, violence or sexual indiscretion, or you complete courses or treatment addressing your risks. One major step towards successful treatment is remorse for your offending. Without that a prisoner is always swimming upstream. In all probability it will take them much longer to show the same progress.
Deep Sagar
Berkhamsted, Herts
Hate crime laws
Sir, Sonia Sodha encapsulates the “post-imperial” mess this country has got itself into in trying to placate disparate minorities (“Hate-crime definitions risk making things worse”, comment, Aug 23). Until we strive for a more utilitarian formulation of class-blind, race-blind, gender-blind legal structures, encompassing all and administered impartially, these entanglements can only get worse. Trying to define the undefinable is a fool’s game.
Paddy McEvoy
March, Cambs
‘Woke’ universities
Sir, As John Maier and Daniel Kodsi astutely observe (Weekend Essay, Aug 23), universities are being undermined from within, not least since those academics who support this pernicious “woke” ideology refuse to admit its very existence. One of the fundamental purposes of a university is to teach students how and not what to think, but the university of today has witnessed discourse being usurped by dogma; critical thinking by critical theory; and evidence-based reasoning by equality, diversion and inclusion. The results are clear: the education students receive in many disciplines has been watered down; standards have plummeted; and universities are reluctant to fail those students who deserve to fail.
Dr Edward Howell
University of Oxford
Sir, The environment John Maier and Daniel Kodsi describe invites comparison with the denouement of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Conditional threats hang in the air and a collective action problem means that groups aiming to engage in pushback do not form. In such circumstances, academics find themselves in a context like the Chestnut Tree Café, where Winston Smith (to use a phrase from Maier and Kodsi) opts for “a quiet life”.
Professor Richard Mullender
Newcastle Law School
Sir, I read history at Oxford from 1965 to 1968, competently enough to be awarded prizes by my college and the university. The left-leaning culture denounced by John Maier and Daniel Kodsi was prevalent then, as now, although I did not share it. In the course of the next half century it became increasingly apparent to me that the application of reason on the basis of evidence usually leads to liberal conclusions; a right-wing standpoint entails prioritising prejudice over thought. “Woke thinking” is, more often than not, the outcome of intellectual honesty.
Andy Connell
Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria
Sir, Where is the new David Lodge to write a coruscating satire on this nonsense? The amount of material is enormous, and the scope for comedy infinite. A great novel beckons.
Martyn Thomas
Bryngwyn, Monmouthshire
Cancer drug prices
Sir, Eleanor Hayward is spot on about the adverse consequences for NHS patients if the UK doesn’t pay more realistic prices (“NHS ‘to trail world on cancer drugs’”, Aug 23). New drugs that benefit patients are coming at a much faster rate than when I was a minister, many of them as the result of work by British scientists. That doesn’t mean the UK gets a free or cheap ride in the competitive international market for those new medicines. Nor does it mean that we should abandon a regulator like Nice that has done such a good job over the last quarter of a century in ensuring that the NHS gets good value for money when new drugs come on the market. But not every new so-called wonder drug represents good value for the taxpayers. What has gone wrong is that the main tool for assessing new drugs has not changed since Nice was set up. Without reform it means that UK patients will inevitably have less access to new medicines than in comparable countries.
Lord Warner
Health minister 2003-2007;
London SW13
When crisis didn’t curtail holiday plan
Sir, Your report on Sir Keir Starmer’s interrupted holiday (Aug 23) reminded me that in August 1968, when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia, Harold Wilson was on holiday in the Isles of Scilly. My father was working in the Ministry of Defence and was in touch, early that morning, with the prime minister’s secretary about getting him back to Downing Street. As the former President Eisenhower was seriously ill at the time, my father had a plane on permanent standby at RAF Northolt to take people to a possible funeral. He decided to send this plane to pick up the prime minister. When asked how quickly he could get the plane to the Isles of Scilly, my father said he would have it there by 9.30am. There was a long pause at the other end of the phone before Mr Wilson’s secretary finally said: “Oh, the prime minister was not expecting to come back to London before lunch.”
Tony Elgood
Winford, Somerset
Museum crowds
Sir, Having just experienced the August overcrowding of the British Museum (free entry for uncomfortable if not unmanageable numbers) and the tranquillity of its current exhibition (paid entry for restricted numbers) I am persuaded:
a) that it is quixotic to allow free entry to the museum for all-comers, especially tourists who elsewhere would expect to pay;
b) that the case for identity cards showing nationality and resident status is already overwhelming;
c) that such cards would provide an easy way to exempt from payment those with British identity.
Timothy George
London W4
Pineapple surprise
Sir, Your report “When pineapples ran rings round other fruit” (Aug 20; letter, Aug 21) reminded me that when researching the history of various zoos I discovered that Knowsley Hall, just outside Liverpool, had a very successful greenhouse system in the Victorian period. Gentlemen in the northwest organising dinner parties could rent for the night a pineapple plant with pineapple in situ, as a table centrepiece, for one guinea. For the sum of two guineas they could retain the plant and eat the pineapple as a dessert at the end of the meal.
Jake Tyler
Washford Cross, Somerset
Beastly menus
Sir, I wholeheartedly agree with Dame Prue Leith (“Leith’s had a bellyful of wordy menus”, Aug 21).
Mostly I don’t even get as far as the dining room to read such descriptions if I see on the entrance the “dog friendly” sign. I find hairy mutts even more annoying and off-putting than camera-wielding influencers.
Heather Tanner
Earl Soham, Suffolk
Sir, At a restaurant in France we were amused to see the waitress demonstrating the menu to non-French speakers by pointing to her kidneys, heart and liver. She had trouble with gizzard, though.
Jonathan Cundy
Kingston upon Thames
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