We need to re-evaluate our treatment of Shamima Begum

It’s interesting to see that the government believes that a 16-year-old is too young to apply for a gender recognition certificate, saying instead that they need to be at least 18 in order to be responsible enough for such an application.

And yet they continue to persecute Shamima Begum for the decisions she made at just 15 – that is, three years younger than the government’s estimated age of maturity. Despite the evidence that suggests Begum and her friends were victims of trafficking, the government has continually refused to reinstate her citizenship.

Begum’s case should be sensitively investigated in the light that she may have been unduly influenced while underage.

Tim Sidaway

Hertfordshire

While David Davis is largely correct in his assessment of the likely impact of raising Johnson from his political grave, still wearing the shroud that put him there, his assessment of Johnson’s importance to the electoral prospects of the Tory party may be wide of the mark.

Whilst Johnson’s presence is unlikely to garner votes, Davis should not underestimate the role of the whole Tory party in our current circumstances and its presence in public perceptions. They loom larger than those of its pin-up boy.

Their current performance in the mismanagement of the NHS and other public bodies will prove memorable. Successive Tory governments have spread their damaging tentacles far and wide but there is one arm that is proving particularly troublesome.

Many people who favoured it have changed their minds. Young people who could not vote against Brexit are becoming voters in numbers, while older supporters are now diminishing apace. The damaging consequences and overt lies underlying it are a growing realisation, and they are Tory; the evolving demographic is not. The refreshed electorate may wish to reinstate former arrangements with the EU or even rejoin. The Tory party and its policies, with or without Johnson, are out of tune and running out of time.

To govern a party needs votes and it is difficult to see where an unreformed Tory party will get them from. Irrespective of team selection and with their current philosophies, the Tory’s best hope for government at all, let alone within the next 10 years, may be electoral mass amnesia. If they choose to continue as the party of the ultra-wealthy, they may not survive at all.

David Nelmes   

Newport

By focusing on cake crumbs, Professor Jebb from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is ignoring the cow in the room. Meat, eggs, and dairy – all of which contain cholesterol and saturated fat – are the main culprits behind the obesity epidemic. All contribute to the UK’s top killers: heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and various types of cancer. The World Health Organisation places processed meat alongside smoking as one of the leading causes of cancer.

Despite the damning scientific evidence, the FSA continues to promote animal-derived foods, even though it’s well documented that many health problems can be alleviated and even reversed by switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet.

So if the agency wanted to address the real problem in our food system, it would advise each of us to ditch these artery-clogging and diabetes-triggering foods and opt for healthier, humane vegan options instead – including indulging, occasionally, in vegan cake.

Bhuvaneshwari Gupta

Address supplied

I was angered to read about the government’s continued failure to take meaningful action to restore and protect nature, notably the “chronic decline in species abundance” observed by the Office for Environmental Protection.

This rapid decline in abundance is clear for fisheries: wild Scottish salmon are at critically low levels. The threat to this species from the ever-growing farmed salmon industry has been explicitly recognised by the Scottish government –from sea lice, disease and pollution to interbreeding. Similarly, the International Union for Conservation of Nature identifies farmed salmon as one of the threats to wild salmon specifically due to pathogens and interbreeding.

Moreover, the farmed salmon industry also threatens wild fish populations in other parts of the globe. Feedback’s research shows that the production of 179,000 tonnes of Scottish Atlantic salmon requires 460,000 tonnes of wild-caught fish for feed, equal to the amount of fish consumed by the UK population every year – 76 per cent of these feed fish are edible by humans. While Scottish feed supply chains are wreathed in mystery, trade and industry data shows that the majority of fish used in feed by global aquafeed companies originate in food-insecure countries such as Peru and Mauritania. Most of the carbon emissions associated with these farms relate to their feed sourcing.

Despite this and its stated aim to “ensure the UK has long-term, sustainable, and profitable fisheries and aquaculture”, the government’s recent joint fisheries statement fails to outline how it will address these issues and protect wild fish from the growing fish farming sector. It furthermore fails to include anything meaningful in terms of mitigating climate change, one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss above and below the water today. We have therefore written to the UK government in view of launching legal proceedings for its failure to regulate the farmed salmon industry. The government must be held to account before we lose precious fish species forever.

Christina O’Sullivan

London