Matt Hancock isn’t the only MP getting paid for not doing his job

I agree entirely that Matt Hancock should be at home working to earn his pay as a member of parliament. Not earning extra cash in a jungle in Australia.

However, he is not alone in getting paid for not doing his job. Where was Boris Johnson before he decided to come home for a leadership election? On holiday in the Caribbean! Parliament had only just got back from a long summer holiday, but he still went on holiday. If hard-working parents had done this and taken their children out of school, they could have been fined.

It is time MPs took a leaf out of Dennis Skinner’s book. When asked about why he was in the House so often, he said: “That’s what I am paid to do.” Simple really.

Matt Hancock is not the only one drawing money under false pretences.

John R Chappell

Huddersfield

Peter Aldous, like many others, seems to think we can fix the energy bills crisis simply by producing more renewable electricity.

None of that helps consumers as long as the energy market pays all producers at the highest unit price of any fuels in the mix. We can hope that crazy profits for renewable generators might be reinvested in research and increased capacity, but there is no formal mechanism to ensure that is the case.

The current UK energy market creates perverse incentives. If you were producing cheap offshore wind, it is simply not in your interests to expand to the point where you push gas out of the mix. I find it interesting that politicians are not discussing this – in fact, I get the sense that they don’t dare go there.

There is apparently no crisis which cannot be turned to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer – see Covid and the 2008 banking crisis for other recent examples.

Rachael Padman

Newmarket

The £350m extra per week for the NHS promised by the Brexit brigade on the side of their bus is enough to pay each NHS nurse an extra £50,000 per year.

So what’s the problem?

Tim Montagnon

Rutland

Thank you to Simon Calder for his review of Brexit benefits. First, it was UK goods and services which were being obstructed in their access to EU markets, now from next year it will be us too, the citizens, who will have to negotiate further impediments as a result of our government’s decision that the UK should have complete “third country” status with its nearest neighbours.

The debate (such as it was) before the referendum about controlling our borders was focused very narrowly on the incoming side of the equation. We were assured that we would not have to worry about outgoing movements because agreements would be reached to ensure that we and our exports could continue to move seamlessly. Look how that turned out.

Yet this week we hear that yet another big independent trade agreement – this time with Brazil – will not happen any time soon; this shows how much less important our country is on the world stage since Brexit.

To cap it all, Brazil is close to agreeing a deal with the EU which we will now not benefit from.

We cannot change the referendum result, but we can do something about the consequences of it. To achieve that, however, we need a proper objective review and debate. We need our politicians, of all parties, to be honest and not just say what they think their audiences want to hear. Some experiments fail; it is not shameful to admit to that, but it is negligent and delusional to pretend otherwise in the face of hard evidence. Mark Carney’s words yesterday (5 November) should not be ignored.

Charles Wood

Birmingham

I agree with The Independent that being “in favour of U-turns from the wrong position to the right one” is preferable to pig-headedly continuing with a bad decision and being unprepared to learn from one’s mistakes.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

I would go further and say that it is an even greater sign of strength to admit that one got things wrong, rather than finding a specious reason to explain one’s change of heart. It is, after all, how we teach our children to behave; to own up and take responsibility for your actions.

It is to be hoped that the prime minister’s action is a sign of things to come and that he will continue to U-turn from bad decisions by, to start with, recognising that the cabinet appointments of Suella Braverman and Gavin Williamson, in order to solder up the leaking hulk of the Conservative Party, was a mistake.

Thereafter, he might boldly go where no politician has been brave enough to go before and admit that our exit from the EU was a catastrophic error and that he believes that we should begin negotiations in order to rejoin the customs union and the single market.

After which we can rejoice in the low carbon fly-past of a flock of pigs.

Graham Powell

Cirencester