Does this government have any British values?

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Priti Patel has put civil servants in a position where they either pay with the loss of their job or have to give the defence of ‘I was only obeying orders’ (Reuters)

My children are being taught the “British values” of democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance. With Partygate, the moves to ban peaceful protest and now the Rwanda migrant scheme, I am wondering whether our government is not British or just has no values.

David Vestey

Taunton

Ministerial direction

By using her ”ministerial direction” to push through the disgraceful plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, Priti Patel has put top civil servants in a position where they either pay with the loss of their job or have to give the defence of “I was only obeying orders”.

What a terrible echo of the past.

Ashley Herbert

Huddersfield

Personal greeting

If the government really wants to stop migrants crossing the Channel, perhaps it should consider promising that Priti Patel will personally greet them?

Paul Burall

Drayton, Norwich

People smugglers

The latest attempt by the government to deal with the numbers of asylum seekers daily making the hazardous crossing of the Channel is unbelievably ill-conceived.

Buying Rwanda’s agreement to accept refugees and allowing the government to divest itself of all responsibility for them is immoral, inhumane, impractical and probably illegal. It is unlikely to deter many of these desperate people from undertaking the crossing.

It is the criminal gangs and their all too lucrative business facilitating the crossings that should surely be where the government ought to apply its imagination and energies. The clear ease with which people smugglers procure inflatable boats is where the focus needs to be.

Seeking the help of the relevant European authorities to identify the trade in these rubber boats and cutting off the supply at source would be much more likely to stop the crossings. This and assuring legal means of applying for asylum would be a much more intelligent, humane and effective way to approach the situation.

Stan Underwood

Lincoln

War and leaders

Hermann Goering, the Nazi war criminal, speaking to American psychologist Gustave Gilbert in 1946, shortly before he committed suicide after the Nuremberg trials, said: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America nor, for that matter, in Germany. That is understood.

“But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

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And this is as true today, as it was then. We listen to speeches, but we seldom listen to the words and ask ourselves – why?

Gunter Straub

London

Covid testing

Overstretched hospitals stopping routine Covid testing for new patients won’t end well, will it? Loads of vulnerable patients in hospitals will die because they catch Covid on the wards now.

This government can’t even implement basic public health measures like mask-wearing in public, good ventilation and a working test and trace system to slow the spread of an extremely contagious disease because they gave the most important mitigation measure (test and trace) to inexperienced private companies without a good track record of running public service.

The Parliamentary Select Committee for Public Spending found the private test and trace system to have made zero difference to spread, yet the Welsh publicly run test and trace was very efficient at contacting people! That says a lot...

Liz Hallworth

Cambridgeshire