If Matt Hancock was negotiating Brexit it could have all been done by now

At last we now have a health secretary who is going to save the NHS. Matt Hancock is proposing to give every patient a barcode. So, no more patients getting lost then or maybe it’s so they can self-scan and make MRI scans a bit like supermarket checkouts. Also he proposes to get rid of paper prescriptions and introduce more technology, thus relying presumably on a new NHS IT system.

What could possibly go wrong?

And according to him, he has come up with all these high-tech, complicated and even revolutionary ideas, just a few days into his new post. If only he had been negotiating Brexit it would all have been sorted by now.

Geoff Forward
Stirling

The government chief whip disregards a pairing agreement in order to win a tight vote, disgraceful behaviour which the prime minister claims was an honest mistake. Vote Leave cheats on electoral expenses, but brushes that finding off as either irrelevant or due to a partisan Electoral Commission. The lying and cheating are so blatant. Theresa May no longer leads, but instead twists and turns.

On the other side we have a Labour leader who seems to be a nice man in an avuncular sort of way, a man who would pass the next door neighbour test, but who always seems a little out of his depth. Then we have the Liberal Democrats whose senior people are so convinced of their own irrelevance that they don’t bother to turn up to an important vote in the House.

All we need now is some rampant inflation and the picture of Britain as a banana republic would be complete. Most of the blame must fall on us, the electorate. We don’t take politics seriously enough and regard it as either boring or just a laugh. But unless we hold our dishonourable politicians to account when they lie or cheat or block the upskirting bill for some obscure reason of their own, we cannot expect better.

Richard Warrell
Devon

How can it be right that Boris Johnson, who resigned from his job as foreign secretary, is to be given a £17,000 payoff for leaving? He chose to resign. How many of us get a payoff when we “resign”?

Peter Cresswell
Enniskillen

Sean O’Grady’s column connecting violent crime and the decline in police numbers perhaps did not go back far enough. Prior to Margaret Thatcher’s Tory party coming to power, in 1978 James Callahan’s Labour government acted on the Lord Edmund Davies report and awarded the police a 45 per cent pay rise which was to be given over two years.

However, in 1979 Thatcher came into power and brought forward the remainder of the pay rise. It was also the Thatcher government which raised the police pension contributions to 11 per cent, when Lord Edmund Davies’ formula gave the police a pay rise which the government thought was excessive. Thatcher was responsible for placing the police at the forefront of her confrontation with the miners which singularly changed policing for the worse. The police were only useful when it suited government and successive Tory home secretaries have demonstrated their attitude to the police, which is not at all friendly.

Frank Sole
Surrey

It is infuriating that we are still grappling with the modern iteration of antisemitism in our time. Antisemitism is repugnant and we should not absolve our responsibility to fight it with teeth and nails. However, Sajid Javid was equally mischievous in implying Jeremy Corbyn was an antisemite and a Holocaust denier.

Dr Munjed Farid al Qutob
London NW2

Thank goodness for Patrick Cockburn’s voice of reason on Friday. Sadly those who really need to reflect on the real and potential damage of this attempt to leave the EU are unlikely to look away from their delusions long enough to take any notice. I can hardly be on my own in feeling shame and embarrassment at the current state of affairs in what passes for a British government. I can only hope that at least some of our European neighbours realise that there are plenty of us who regret heartily what is happening.

Sandi Cook
Northamptonshire