Housing should be the top priority for the next government

Living in rented accommodation with the threat of the misery of eviction at the whim of the landlord must have a seriously detrimental effect on the renter’s quality of life. How can you continue with your job and your social life if there is no alternative, affordable accommodation in the area?

What happens to children’s education and mental health if they suddenly have to change schools and find new friends elsewhere?

This appalling vulnerability for more than 30 per cent of UK households also reduces national productivity and increases work for the NHS. It must now be given top priority by our next government.

Tom Canham

Hereford

There used to be an old criminal offence – now replaced generally by the Fraud Act 2006 – of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception. One of the sub-sections carried the definition of an offence being committed if one attempts to gain remuneration in an office through deception.

My memory and knowledge of this is purely down to years in a high-street bank and occurrences of dodgy references to either gain a job with said bank, or customers doing likewise to obtain funds in lieu of a “big job” coming up.

I am not au courant with the 2006 act, but presumably it appears somewhere. I mention all this purely because of reports that a Conservative local councillor, named as Ross Hills, donned a hi-vis jacket and posed as a worker supposedly chosen at random to ask a question of Rishi Sunak on Thursday; one favourable to the Tory cause, of course.

Now, I’m not saying that a big police operation needs to commence, but this is a matter serious enough to finish the Conservatives’ lust for power beyond 4 July. It’s dishonest!

Robert Boston

Kingshill, Kent

Rishi Sunak doesn’t rule out Boris Johnson joining the Tory election campaign. You are kidding yourself, prime minister, it’s been 14 years of chaos and incompetence. You deserve to be kicked out of office.

Dale Hughes

Address supplied

I sincerely hope that a new government will cease the iniquitous and unjustified cull on badgers. I will not vote for any party which continues the cull.

Other factors: cattle are mutant introductions which have no place in the natural environment, certainly not in the numbers existing. The original wild cattle (Aurochs) would have only existed in small numbers with a light and beneficial footprint on the environment. The last known one was killed in Poland in 1617.

Badgers are native and belong here. It is the badgers which need protecting from the cattle! Get rid of the infected cattle like they do in Australia. where if one of a herd is a reactor the whole herd is slaughtered and the surrounding herds closely monitored and will suffer the same fate if they too have any reactors.

They know their problem began in cattle exported from the UK – they do not blame their native wildlife. Britain has exported the disease to many other nations; as a consequence, many wild species have suffered (including lions) from eating diseased cattle. If you are really serious about stopping the cull, don’t just complain – stop eating cattle products and their milk.

The last thing this nation, which cannot feed its populous (and in the process of attempting to do so has decimated its natural environments) needs is cattle farming. Quite apart from the environmental pollution and destruction that comes with it, it is a highly inefficient waste of land. The Joseph Poore Institute reckons that 100 times more protein can be produced by growing peas on the same area used to graze and feed cattle. Why are we subsidising such an inefficient industry?

All animal and fowl farming and feed supply is an environmental disaster and inefficient use of land. We have to face the effects of global warming, much of which is a consequence of animal farming.

Graham Cooper

Address supplied