The Government’s ‘air quality plan’ is inadequate to tackle climate change

While the government is on holiday, can anybody explain how they can simultaneously scrap plans to electrify our railways, whilst proposing to ban all petrol and diesel cars by 2040? Perhaps somebody should get the Department of Transport and the Department for the Environment to exchange phone numbers?

Phil Gilbert
Hallaton

The selfishness and ineffectiveness of the Tories continues with the air quality debacle. If science and commerce do not prevail, the Tory attitude is that anyone unable to afford the means to create their own clean environment will continue to suffer long-term asthma and other respiratory problems, all at great economic cost that probably equates to trillions of wasted value. This could make the asbestos scandal look like a mere summer cold.

What with poverty-induced seasonal deaths due to poorly heated homes, and rationing of treatment and operations in a hamstrung NHS, the reality of the Tories being the nasty party is harshly apparent. Its lack of action and profusion of failing policy on everything from industrial strategy and education to affordable housing and care for the elderly is not a recipe but the product of decades of driving towards the destruction of a fair society that millions fought and died for.

The environment, safe energy and future growth are all sacrificed on the altar of short-term profit, “unaffordable” investment, and the suffering of the poorer members of this modern Britain. The similarities with our poorly managed and under-invested Tory-led businesses are starkly apparent. It takes foreigners to show us how it’s done and how spending creates wealth and comfort.

Engaging the population with politics is the opportunity that the union movement once presented to workers. It is not a left-wing unionised and nationalised UK that a modern society needs – it is a democratic and liberal one.

Michael Mann
​Shrewsbury

I’ve long been inclined to ignore Tory stances on the environment (whenever they bother) for the simple reason that they simply pollute the discourse with spin and hyperbole. We need action, not empty rhetoric.

David Murphy
Address supplied

Legal fee access shouldn’t just be for employment cases

The Supreme Court decision to declare illegal employment tribunal fees as denying access to justice is to be welcomed. However, I wonder if this judgment can be extended to other legal fees; whether applied via a court fee or via a lawyer’s invoice. I am not rich, I cannot afford the tens, or hundreds, of thousands of pounds to take case to court. To have to defend a case would mean financial ruin. Neither am I poor enough to qualify for legal aid. Therefore, the legal system is a no-go area and legal redress is closed to me, and there are millions of people like me in the UK.

Roger Spurr
​Rotherham

Let us welcome the Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of employees’ rights to gain access to employment tribunals without the large fees imposed by the Government. Let us be somewhat sceptical, though, of the fine words of the justices about how our democracy and justice require “in principle” unimpeded access to the courts – for, as the tribunal case shows, we also need that access “in practice”.

Think of the legal aid cuts introduced around the same time as the tribunal fees. Those cuts mean that many of the most vulnerable people, including children and young adults, lack that unimpeded access to justice on many important injustices concerning family law, mental health, personal injury, immigration, and police and government action.

Our Government, judiciary and many media commentators are very keen to proclaim that, in Britain, we are all equal before the law. They tend to go quiet when asked whether that means we all have equal access to the law. Equality before the law does not help those unable to get before the law.

Peter Cave
London W1

Give Rees-Mogg a chance

Stop taking the mickey out of Jacob Rees-Mogg. He talks sense and has integrity which is lacking in so many of today’s politicians and he is true to himself. So what if he is posh? He is lucid and connects, he is calm and intelligent – all good qualities. They should take him off the back benches, put him in cabinet and give him a chance.

Gael Bage
Address supplied

Wind power is the way

Two letters in Tuesday’s Independent rubbished Scottish windpower without mentioning climate change. Are the authors climate change deniers or just nimbys?

One letter mentioned subsidies for renewables without mentioning the subsidies for fossil fuels. In particular there was no mention of the fact that users of fossil fuels do not pay for the future costs they impose on others who will suffer the effects of climate change.

The other letter homes in on the problems of matching supply to demand without acknowledging the ways in which this can be addressed. It may not be an easy problem but it is far, far easier to deal with than global food shortages and rising sea levels. We desperately need to get on with installing renewable generation and associated infrastructure.

Peter Newbery
Address supplied