Letters

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.

Recent polling found that while 42 per cent of voters would support an increase in tax to pay for a larger NHS budget, this figure climbed to 53 per cent once voters were asked about an increase in national insurance contributions.

Yesterday’s out-of-court settlement will give BHS pensioners a better retirement than had previously looked likely. This marks a really important milestone on the road to justice, but we are far from reaching the end of that road.

Sure Start began its life with an impressive focus on the most important aspects of the relationship between low-income mothers and their young children that play such a crucial role in determining those children’s life chances. It then morphed into an extension of the then Labour government’s welfare-to-work programme to help parents into jobs.