The NHS is our greatest institution, I would hate to see it ruined

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The NHS has been one of the big issues during the election campaign (Getty/iStock)

My 15-year-old daughter was seriously injured in a car accident four months ago. She was unconscious for 10 weeks but thankfully is making a good recovery.

Undoubtedly her life was saved on more than one occasion by the NHS. What I saw in the 15 weeks we were in hospital reconfirmed my view that the NHS is the greatest national institution we have in the UK.

When I asked her what she thought about the general election she said: “I hope Labour doesn’t get in because I love the NHS and they’ll ruin it”. This surprised me as she is politically savvy and knows that Labour plan to spend large sums on the NHS.

I gave this some thought and find I agree with her concern. A “four-day-week”-induced skills crisis, mixed with a loss of senior clinicians fleeing punitive tax rates and the loss of capacity due to an ideological refusal to use privately run commissioned services would indeed cripple this beloved, envied and vital service.

For my daughter’s sake, for the many other users, and perhaps most of all for the dedicated medical staff who daily go above and beyond to care for us all, I hope this doesn’t happen.

Paul Rowles

Old Brampton, Derbyshire

Not just Brexit

The upcoming general election is more than a vote on Brexit. The lingering injustices and gruelling austerity measures have blighted peoples’ lives and have had devastating impacts on education, housing, the police, women’s rights, the welfare state, schools and other public services.

The rise of nationalism and the far-right, the concentration of power by elites, the erosion of collective liberties and the threats to minorities, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers demand a more reasoned, open, tolerant, outward-looking and generally calmer politics.

Last, we should endeavour to end arms sales to dictatorial regimes with abysmal human rights records and further civil, social and political rights in distant countries wracked by political violence and instability.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London

Scotland and the EU

A new poll tells us that Scots would be likely to vote narrowly for Scexit if Brexit were to go ahead. This suggests that too many Scots are living in fantasyland. Certainly, Ms Sturgeon peddles the fiction that a separate Scotland’s entry into the EU would be “relatively quick” (relative to what?). Some of her adjutants even claim that Scotland would “remain” in the EU after Scexit. All of this ignores the fact that the EU is a rules-based organisation, and that EU rules require an applicant country to have its own currency and central bank, neither of which Scotland has. Setting up a new central bank would cost tens of billions of pounds, at a time when setting up the machinery of a new state would already be costing vast amounts of money.

All doubt about this would be dispelled if Ms Sturgeon could produce evidence that an EU Commissioner or two had guaranteed that a separate Scotland fulfilled the EU’s entry requirements. Until that time, claims that Scotland could escape Brexit by leaving the UK are SNP pie in the sky. The choice for voters is being in the UK and stomaching Brexit, or else being outside BOTH the UK and the EU.

Jill Stephenson

Edinburgh

Climate and quangos

I notice that various councils now are setting up climate change committees at our expense.

Why should we, the taxpayers, have to once again pay for quangos? Climate change is global. It can only be tackled through co-operation between nations, not local authorities. To me it seems that any councillor on that committee might simply gain more in allowances, and yet really and truly have no influence.

Once again this is a reason for us not to leave our full membership of the EU. We all have to work together. The EU is a most important gathering of like-minded countries.

This is not a political letter, it is one where I stand with many millions, if not billions, of our population who genuinely want to save our world.

Richard Grant

Burley

Labour and public spending

Labour is promising going on a mighty spending spree. And when I say mighty, I mean it.

I pray every day that we won’t be governed by a man promising a mighty spending spree that plunges this country into debt that we cannot pay back.

Yours mightily worried,

Alice Lockett-Ford

Cardiff

A hard transition

I believe that Boris Johnson has been telling porkies again.

Surely it’s not project fear for me to predict that the transition period, following implementation of his Withdrawal Agreement, would herald another year of under-investment followed by a hard Brexit and yet another long period of under-investment.

David Parsons

Portsmouth