Will Rishi Sunak come clean about national insurance levy?

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

Sunak later corrected his spring statement (AP)

Rishi Sunak announced that “every penny of the increased national insurance levy will go towards removing the NHS backlog”, with no mention of fixing social care for which the government’s “NHS and social care levy” was also intended.

Sunak later corrected that in his spring statement by announcing that every penny raised would go to fix both the NHS and social care despite having reduced the amount raised from national insurance.

The chancellor must therefore explain how much of the NI levy will be available for social care and when the neglect of the elderly, which Jeremy Hunt called “a source of national shame” in 2013, will at last be resolved to prevent millions more isolated elderly dying alone and unsupported by proper social care at home.

Trevor Lyttleton

London

Private health insurance

I read the article by Cathy Newman (“Our deep love for the NHS shouldn’t blind us to its flaws”) and at the end of her piece she tells readers she has recently seen her GP regarding a suspicious mole. Given the choice of waiting six weeks to be seen in the NHS or using work-provided private health insurance, she made a rather self-righteous statement that she opted for the NHS as it would appear only the rich get help paying their own way. The numbers on the NHS waiting list is now more than 6 million and counting. Did it occur to Ms Newman that by choosing the latter, if indeed she is able, she would be giving the opportunity of an appointment in the NHS to someone less fortunate who is unable to use private health insurance or pay out of their own pockets?

Everyone who pays taxes is entitled to use the NHS. If some people choose to purchase private health insurance for whatever reason, they are not only paying double for their treatment but also giving up their entitlement to use the NHS to someone else.

Not a bad thing considering the length of the NHS waiting list at the moment.

C Gadsby

Buckinghamshire

Where do Russians stand?

Thank you Mary Dejevsky for presenting the Russian perspective on the war. That she can do so without fear of detention by the state, and removal to hard labour in some remote Welsh slate quarry for the next nine years, is a privilege that is rightly hers and one from which I and others truly benefit. However, whichever arguments and reasons she presents for Russian grievances (and I do not doubt that there are many), I cannot believe that the majority of ordinary Russian people (human beings like us) would, having been provided with the footage of the indiscriminate wholesale destruction of densely populated civilian cities of a country that their country has unilaterally decided to invade, agree with what their country was doing at present.

Michael du Pré

Marlow,Buckinghamshire

The gap between rich and poorest

John Rentoul’s Voices piece on the gap between richest and poorest is a timely warning to those of us on the left who wish to oust the Tories.

It rightly suggests that we need to be thoughtful and nuanced in the evils we claim to target. So here’s my contribution to that: if we want to achieve a reduction in harmful inequalities in Britain, we should greatly increase the resources available to those responsible for combatting their effects. I’d be happy to pay more taxes if I saw them going to local professionals, locally knowledgeable and locally supported.

I want to see a kinder Britain before I die, and that ain’t going to happen till the worn-out thinking of ministers and civil servants is thoroughly flushed out of Londongrad.

Philip Probert

Colwall, Herefordshire

The destruction of Mariupol

I wonder if the Russian ambassador to the UK, if he has not already been deported, cares to comment on just how Mariupol has been flattened and thousand killed, in direct contradiction with his government’s false claim that they don’t target civilians. And since when were explosive shells ever capable of being precisely targeted?

G Forward

Stirling

Breaking the law

If I broke the law in some way, I’d be unsurprised if it were reported in my local newspaper and, if serious enough, syndicated to the nationals. I cannot see the difference between this and those being prosecuted for Partygate offences. Let’s have all the names, please. They are, in the main, public servants whose salaries are paid by us taxpayers.

Richard Lloyd

Dunfermline, Fife