A rise in VAT could be the way to fund social care

With so much hand-wringing and heated argument about funding essential social care, can I offer a solution that could afford other benefits?

We have a huge obesity problem in the UK, which impacts significantly on the NHS that has to deal with the related health issues. How about considering a hike in VAT that would be unarguably ethical and could have very positive health outcomes? A junk food tax would not be too much of a challenge to formulate and might be bracketed – for similar health reasons – with tobacco and alcohol taxes.

This would have to be unequivocally mandated, positive and clear in its intentions and backed by medical science. The tax generated would offer a multifaceted benefit and if an individual is prepared to pay more for products that have little or no nutritional value, they might have the satisfaction of knowing that they are supporting a good cause.

Carol Sims

Modbury, Devon

There can be few in the UK unaware of the serious shortage of lorry drivers. In puzzling what lies behind this, a few will be aware of pending tax changes affecting drivers’ earnings, but most will attribute the shortage to Brexit. Tory Brexit supporters will no doubt be very annoyed but will put on a brave face – just a teething problem, there are bound to be some.

There is of course an easy partial solution, by way of allowing experienced EU drivers to work here in the short term by adding them to the Shortage Occupation List. It is thus irritating, to say the least, when we have Kwasi Kwarteng telling us that HGV drivers are not sufficiently specialist to warrant inclusion on this list.

I have never driven a heavy goods vehicle but what is blindingly obvious is the skill and endurance such work entails, from hours of concentration driving every day on Britain’s crowded roads, to reversing their vehicle into a narrow entrance with the utmost precision. For Kwarteng and his fellow MPs there are no requirements for entering parliament.

Kwarteng might like to mull over the fact that all or any of those drivers out there could readily take his place in parliament, but no way could he or his fellow MPs take a heavily loaded articulated lorry out on the roads – even if they were empty of other traffic.

Ian Wingfield

Bamford, Derbyshire

We have supermarkets with empty shelves because there aren’t enough HGV drivers, not enough fruit and vegetable pickers, care homes in danger of closing down because there aren’t enough carers, and hospitality venues and restaurants operating at reduced levels because employees are unavailable.

One argument being peddled for Brexit was that too many jobs in the UK were taken by non-British EU citizens, and we spent years having to endure listening to the likes of Iain Duncan Smith instructing us that the solution to UK success was to leave the EU and take back control of our borders.

Yet, since the many post-Brexit problems of staffing have emerged, the Brexit brigade have gone into hiding. They’ve become silent. They’re invisible. We should dig them out and ask them to explain why the shortfalls of HGV drivers, horticulture field workers, carers and hospitality staff did not figure in their predictions about the benefits (sic) of leaving the EU.

Ian Reid

Kilnwick, Yorkshire

Looking at John Rentoul’s ever-splendid Top 10 this week made me exclaim: “Where is the prime minister and where are his two predecessors?” Of course, I quickly realised that there was a second stipulation.

Anyway, with luck we shall still be enjoying this series in say 20 years, and if the above is repeated I cannot see how the three individuals concerned doing enough to make up for the carnage they have caused!

Maybe we should just do “useless leaders” instead.

Robert Boston

Kingshill, Kent

Susan Alexander is right (Letters) that, since the Conservative Party seems happy to tolerate the serial incompetence of the Boris Johnson administration, it rests with the electorate to remove him and his kind from office.

Hoping, as she rightly does, for “some form of proportionality... in our voting system” can only happen if there is a medium-term alliance between left-of-centre parties.

The removal of this hopeless government is an urgent and crying need; individual parties must unite in that single goal. Those fantasists in the Labour Party who believe in the purity of a socialist revolution that is just waiting to be called must get behind their current leader and encourage him to act in the nation’s interest. Then present, with other parties, a strategic vision for the future of which Johnson, with all his self-centred short-term politics, is incapable.

Graham Powell

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

If it wasn’t for the undeniable pain that many people in this country are suffering it would be fun to watch the struggles that the Tories are going through at the moment, let’s hope that this signifies their departure from the political stage for a few years. I say this as a completely disillusioned lifelong (77-year-old) Tory.

Many of us when faced with the Boris Johnson/Jeremy Corbyn dilemma looked elsewhere in desperation toward equally leaderless alternatives. It is completely undemocratic that our distaste for what was on the menu led to this arrangement where a minority choice by the electorate give the winners a massive 80 seat majority.

In the next election it is going to be extremely unlikely that there will be a Labour breakthrough in Scotland, and without that there is no chance of a Keir Starmer-led Labour majority

Is this not the time for Labour to review their attitude to some form of proportional representation? Then make a clear statement about their intention to bring about that legislation if able to form a government, and immediately to form an alliance with the Liberal Democrats, Greens and whoever else to achieve it.

Secure a majority, pass the legislation and then have a meaningful new election with the aim to produce a balanced coalition.

Alastair Duncan

Winchester