Why should pensioners pay for other people’s children?

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

Rather than remove the two-child benefit cap, perhaps child support should first be means-tested (PA)

As a 75-year-old pensioner on an income below the accepted poverty line, I object to Andrew Grice’s suggestion that the two-child benefit cap should be removed unilaterally (“This will be the first Labour backbench rebellion – and Starmer’s first U-turn”, Monday 24 June).

We live in a society where certain women admit to having five children by five different fathers. Why should everyone be obliged to pay her for the privilege?

There is also a cultural aspect to having many children so that they will look after their parents in later life. But, again, why should pensioners like myself be forced to pay for it?

Child support is paid to everyone regardless of whether or not it is needed. I suggest that there must be a cap or, if it is removed, it should be means-tested. Isn’t this what universal credit, properly applied, is meant to be about?

Piers Chalinor

London

Why Starmer won’t need a supermajority

I share the frustration of Roger Hinds (Letters, Tuesday 25 June) that the scaremongering about a potential Labour “supermajority” is exactly that – scaremongering.

During Radio 4’s Today programme, a professor of politics stated quite simply that a supermajority is not even a thing. It is, in fact, a manufactured term dreamed up, no doubt, by those running the Tory election campaign.

She explained that our first-past-the-post system means that once you have a majority of around 45, the ruling party can get its legislation through. Anything above and beyond that point makes little difference.

Karen Brittain

York

Conservatives’ calamitous ‘crackdown’ on crime

The unexpected and unwanted consequence of the “crackdown on crime” by this government is that fewer criminals are actually being prosecuted and punished as intended or not at all.

There appears not to be enough prison space, court time or manpower for people charged with offences, particularly knife crime, to be brought to justices as prescribed by law. Those who are eventually found guilty of a crime are facing, what appears to me, lenient sentences.

This failure is yet another example of the disjointed governance by the Tories. Their logic of management is fatally flawed. To “crack down” on crime the police force, courts and judges need to be capable of processing the increased numbers of transgressors. Instead, the Tories depleted our police force, reduced the number of courts and were slow to build new prisons or expand current prisons to accommodate the increase due to more prosecutions.

Like many other aspects of Tory governance, it is ill-thought-out, badly implemented and lacks concerted effort thereafter.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

Tell us your tax plans

The Institute for Fiscal Studies is to be applauded for tackling the elephant in the room in this general election campaign, that is the stark choices the key political parties will have to make in relation to the public finances if elected.

We in the UK are experiencing the highest level of debt for more than 60 years, the tax burden is at a record high and public services are struggling.

While the government is paying huge interest on this debt and welfare bills have grown, spending on health is likely to increase because of an ageing population – with the funding of defence also set to rise. The solution to deliver increased investment, higher economic growth, is a pipe dream in at least the short to medium term.

Taxes will therefore have to rise – despite a commitment by the main political parties not to raise VAT, national insurance or income tax – or cuts made in public services. The alternative being to borrow more and see debt continue to escalate.

The main political parties must end this conspiracy of silence and be honest with the public as to what is in store further down the line. However, I would urge the voters not to hold their breath on this happening.

Alex Orr

Edinburgh

There was life before the sharing economy

A few years ago – well before Airbnb arrived on the scene – we went travelling. We stayed in a series of flat swaps in a number of European cities and we went several times to New York; even to Tokyo. It was all arranged through an excellent website, and we never had any bad experiences, either with the flats that we stayed in or in the way our guests treated our flat while we were away.

Why pay good money for Airbnb rentals, which are proving problematic in many popular destinations, when you can swap homes, see the world and have very enjoyable experiences for free? (“Barcelona is banning Airbnbs – Britain should take back control, too”, Monday 24 June)

Gavin Turner

Gunton, Norfolk