Letters

The key is not to keep setting deadlines - i.e. three years for this and three years for something else - but working out an agreement that is best for Britain, whatever the timetable.

We need to negotiate a safe harbour so that the negotiations can be completed in a way that gives industry total confidence that moves are going to be made over decisions on investment and employment.

If gig companies are required by law always to abide by the minimum wage, even if that means a loss in flexibility, they will need to regulate the supply of labour or pay from their profits the minimum wage when there is not the level of demand to pay all workers at that rate.

Labour’s immediate campaign should be twofold. Any new money the party commits should be to reverse the cuts in benefits paid to working-age people.

A letter from Labour’s Frank Field urges ministers to step in to improve the lot of Uber drivers and others working in the gig economy

Now is the time to sweep away two of the gig economy’s most egregious aspects – the bullying culture at the top; and the poor treatment and poverty pay meted out to workers at the bottom – so that it helps society as a whole prosper, rather than falter.

Frank Field MP says there is an urgent need to move beyond slogans and start to spell out the broad negotiating headings and how these will link to great domestic reform

At present, our country’s failure to prevent holiday hunger wipes out the improvements in life chances that are delivered by breakfast clubs during term time.

One way of meeting our target to spend 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid, in a way that builds support among voters who want a guarantee on the best housekeeping of their hard-earned money, would be to establish, say, a Commonwealth venture capital fund, into which that part of the 0.7% that Priti Patel has cause to believe is misspent, or fraudulently used, could be paid. This fund would then be used for job-creating investment programmes in the Commonwealth as and when the need was proved, and not arbitrarily governed by the need to spend money by the end of the financial year.