Letters

Some 1.5 million poor children are currently disqualified from receiving free school meals because their parents claim tax credits to top up their income from low-paid work. Abolishing this penalty would help, in some considerable way, to cement the government’s commitment to ensuring work is the best route out of poverty.

David Edgar may be right (Corbyn’s opponents could be correct. But I’m still inspired, Opinion, 31 August), and he does more than raise our spirits. To win in 2020, Labour now needs to appeal to a much more fragmented electorate. To do so successfully, I believe we need to develop further the initiatives that David suggests.

The government calls its failure to reduce migrant numbers “deeply disappointing”. What, then, is to be done?

Jeremy has always held a principled stand on all issues while others in the Labour party have voted in an attempt to make Labour electable. I hoped Jeremy’s entrance into the race would ensure the other candidates would confront the “deficit denial” stance that clearly a very large proportion of Labour party members hold.

The shock front-runner for Labour leader is a deficit denier and it's not too late for the other candidates to challenge him, says Frank Field

Labour has the opportunity to help shape a Budget that could be game-changing while at the same time leading public opinion against a deficit reduction programme that hits, so unfairly, many of the poorest strivers in society.

The budget could become the cornerstone of a new industrial and welfare consensus

The key question for this parliament is how to raise productivity, for it is only by this means that one can securely base real incomes for the vast majority of the population.

There should be no immediate reductions in tax credits to existing claimants but the aim should be to achieve a policy on the Living Wage which, by the end of the Parliament, had delivered real increases in wages for the lowest paid, which would reduce significantly the claim on wage subsidies.