There is no excuse for denying nurses a decent wage

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

It’s also worth remembering that our public service staff worked throughout the pandemic to save countless lives (PA)

It beggars belief that Stephen Barclay and Oliver Dowden deny that public sector workers, especially nurses, are worth paying a decent wage when the most dishonest, incompetent prime minster of our lifetime can earn £1m by speaking in the few months since his resignation, when he should be working on behalf of his constituents.

It’s also worth remembering that our public service staff worked throughout the pandemic to save countless lives while the government oversaw the deaths of many thousands, and even threw drinking parties in No 10 while doing so!

Mike Coomber

Address supplied

Divide and rule

The Conservative government are rolling out the big guns in their fight against the unions. Divide and conquer has been in the playbook of this government for the last 12 years.

We’ve had the Brexit claims of foreigners coming here, stealing all of our jobs and overloading the NHS and education system. We heard how benefits claimants are “scroungers”, lying in bed snoozing while you had to get up and go to work.

The “invasion” of migrants, who are not fleeing war and conflict. Oh no, not according to Ms Braverman. They’re trying to get here to sponge from us. And anyone who doesn’t agree with her eats too much tofu.

So now we have to hate those who are fighting for better pay and for secure jobs. Those who have the nerve to band together in a union, of all things. It will cost you all £1,000 a year to give nurses a pay rise, we’re being told by Rishi Sunak. Even while he is being told by financial watchdogs that his figures are incorrect, and that he should stop repeating them.

When the number of billionaires in the UK has jumped, we have to ask ourselves why, instead of trying to shame workers into accepting a below-inflation pay deal.

Karen Brittain

York

The maths is simple

With Oliver Dowden and other ministers now trying to defend the indefensible in the public sector pay dispute, the real question is whether the nation can afford not to give fair pay and conditions.

The NHS’s reported 50,000 nursing vacancies indicate a career which is not financially attractive. We all agree that we need an effective NHS, but good public services need good and experienced people to operate them. The maths is simple, it’s only that the numbers got bigger after 12 years of short-sighted public sector policy. Similar arguments can be made for other sectors where strikes are occurring.

Elsewhere, government is concerned about growing levels of economic inactivity; these two issues are not unconnected.

Charles Wood

Birmingham

The reality of EU membership

Referencing the article by John Rentoul, strictly speaking the majority of people did not vote to leave the EU. If we take into account the total number of remain voters plus the non-voters, a very different picture is seen.

I suspect that the outcome of a further vote would be very different now, as experience of a post-Brexit environment will have provided the raw facts that were already clearly evident to anyone who understood the reality of EU membership, despite the blatant lies and misrepresentations that manifested themselves in the leave campaign.

Of course, the lack of any serious contribution by David Cameron, who clearly believed that agreeing to the request for a referendum by the ERG et al would shut them up, fuelled his unwillingness to engage in any form of debate.

Stephen Dickinson

Charlwood, Surrey