We need an anti-corruption court to stop cases like Richard Sharp

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Richard Sharp has quit as BBC chairman (PA)

The Sharp affair, coupled with similar conflict of interest cases, reinforces the need for an anti-corruption court in the UK. Many other countries have such a body and it is clear now that we should too.

The Johnson years have left a bad taste in the mouth of those who value clean, transparent government. A new national settlement covering the whole range of current constitutional and political concerns is badly needed.

Andrew McLuskey

Ashford, Middlesex

The BBC needs to be overhauled

Now that Richard Sharp, chair of the BBC, has fallen on his sword it is time for director general Tim Davie to quit too. Tim Davie has steered the BBC towards a disaster.

The Gary Lineker fiasco and the loss of trust in the BBC means that Tim has to do the right thing and let someone else take over. The bias in reporting on national and international matters has led people to believe that the BBC is working on a set agenda. A clean sweep of the BBC hierarchy will be a first step towards restoring the reputation of the organisation.

Nitin Mehta

Croydon

Sad to say, we have grown accustomed to the government’s manifold cynicisms and incompetences. But now they’ve come up with a new one.

Doctors who are employed by the NHS, but do not have UK passports, are not being allowed to board an RAF plane to escape from Sudan. They have to risk making their way overland to Egypt.

Is this another attempt to sabotage the NHS? Or is it an example of gross stupidity on the part of whoever made the decision? In either case, it does the Tories no credit and is another reminder of why we need a general election very soon.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

Whose values?

Trying to justify her racist Illegal Migration Bill this week, home secretary Suella Braverman argued that desperate asylum-seekers crossing the channel in small boats are “totally unacceptable to our country and to our values” and associated desperate people fleeing war and oppression from places such as Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Eritrea, with “drug dealing, exploitation, prostitution.”

Her argument was echoed by immigration minister Robert Jenrick who, in a speech to the right-wing Policy Exchange think-tank on Tuesday insisted “astronomical” numbers of asylum-seekers were crossing the channel and that their “different lifestyles and values” “undermine cultural cohesiveness” of the UK.

Both Braverman and Jenrick’s arguments are false.

There is no evidence linking refugees and crime. Braverman’s own Home Office admits the vast majority of those crossing the channel are escaping war and oppression. Nor are their numbers “astronomical”. Last year, the UK granted 200,000 visas to Ukrainians escaping Putin’s invasion of their country and 140,000 visas to people from Hong Kong. That compares to just 45,755 people who arrived in the UK via small boat.

This begs the question as to what, exactly, the much-referenced values referenced by Braverman and Jenrick are and who they think coheres to them. In his anti-asylum dog-whistle speech to the Policy Exchange Jenrick seemingly reached out to the racist mobs who have attacked hostels accommodating asylum-seekers (like those who clashed with police in Knowsley earlier this year) arguing they should be “heeded” not “managed”.

On Thursday the far-right Italian prime minister and leader of the populist and nationalist “Brother of Italy” party, Giorgia Meloni, paid an official visit to Rishi Sunak in Downing Street and praised his immigration policies.

This clarifies what those much-referenced Tory “values” are. To me, they are racist “values” shared by racist thugs and someone whom many regard as a direct political descendent of the fascist dictator Mussolini. And they are totally unacceptable to the vast majority who reject the poison of racism.

Sasha Simic

London