The DWP treats ESA claimants like my grandson disgracefully – it must be challenged

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Esther McVey’s DWP was heavily criticised in The Independent this week (Getty)

James Moore’s assessment of the Department of Work and Pensions is spot on. My grandson waited 12 months for an appeal against withdrawal of ESA. He won the appeal and then heard nothing from the DWP, not even an acknowledgement that they knew about the appeal result. After several phone calls to DWP call centres, never speaking to the same person of course, they demand an explanation from my grandson as to how he had supported himself during the past 12 months when they had stopped ESA. On challenging this request, DWP staff could not point to any legislative requirement for this information.

Eventually six weeks after the appeal decision he starts to receive payment. Frankly the DWP reflect their ministerial masters: they are full of rhetoric about caring but in truth they could not care less.

Colin Thomas
Dorstone

Boris Johnson’s comments on Russia were offensive and unnecessary

I have lived in the UK for 18 years married to my English husband. I have been a British National for 15 years but I was born in Russia. All my life in the UK I was a supporter of the Conservative Party and I personally knew my local MPs – until now, thanks to Boris Johnson and his speech.

It is sickening to hear his comparison of Russia to Hitler’s Germany, anyway that’s what it looks like from where I stand. I thought that the Foreign Secretary should be at least familiar with the history – Russia lost more than 20 million people in the Second World War – my family lost three young men in the battle for Stalingrad. My father was a young military pilot and my mum was a radio operator in 1945.

It is very unwise to make such comments – Russian people are very sensitive and proud people and every family lost someone in a war against the Nazis and the memories will last for generations.

I was happily living here, having my husband, children and grandchildren around and my family visiting from abroad. But now the Conservatives have lost me. Johnson said that there are a lot of Russian admirers of Britain and him still... I doubt that after his latest comments. Maybe the wife of the Russian oligarch who lives in London and paid £160,000 to play tennis with him...

I am definitely considering voting for Labour or maybe the Liberal Democrats now. Sorry for being quite emotional, but the elections are coming and we need to make the right choice now.

Irina Hurrell
Address supplied

What has the Government gained from outsourcing passports?

The decision to outsource the manufacture of British passports to France demonstrates that while we have politicians willing to enact the Brexit referendum vote, they don’t have the wit or experience to pursue the economic policies necessary to support it.

It is not simply the fact that this commission should have gone to a British business, but that it should have gone to a British manufacturer that employs workers in our economy, who would have then spent their wages in our society. Nothing in the minute savings the Government claims to have made from this outsourcing offsets this loss to our society.

If you’re going to outsource rather than “take back control” you might as well still be in the EU?

Gavin Lewis
Manchester

Black passports

Are all the people making a fuss about British passports and the media pundits reporting it too young to have seen one, or are they colour blind? The passports were not blue, but black. I still have mine and I just checked that my memory isn’t playing tricks. It is still black. Or is this just another alternative fact?

John Harrison
Address supplied

Blue passport sabotage

Oh what glorious irony that during the Brexidiotic project fate hands us the news that the new blue British passports will be printed in mainland Europe. How many more of these “we told you so moments” can we look forward to?

Name and address supplied

The world is bigger than the USA

I wonder if the American leadership has ever considered the fairly recent and enormous shift in the geopolitical landscape?

China is no longer a third world nation – it has the second largest economy, soon to overtake the USA. India is following.

There are some 6.7 billion people living in this world, give or take a few hundred million, other than Americans, with views of their own.

Time to tread softly?

Gunter Straub
London