A new deal for asylum
Any civilised society with hate mobs on its streets needs to reflect not only on its political discourse (“stop the boats”) but also on policy failures. Placing asylum seekers in hotels (“The asylum king”, Summer Special) is one such failure, and they have become a magnet for far-right attacks.
The people attacked in Rotherham and elsewhere fled war, violence and terror. Many will have been in hotels for months, even years, banned from working, and struggling with poor mental health. Our research shows that half of people in hotels come from five countries with high asylum grant rates—Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Granting asylum to people from those countries in hotels and other accommodation could end 89 per cent of hotel use overnight, saving over £5m a day.
Despite the previous government’s promises to end hotel use, by last September there were more than 56,000 people in hotels, up from around 1,600 at the start of 2020. This is symptomatic of a dysfunctional asylum system that first failed to make timely decisions and then refused to process claims at all.
We welcome the new government’s commitment to restart claims processing. There is a unique opportunity for a deal that puts local authorities and communities at the heart of decision-making, houses people in a safe, dignified way and ensures value for taxpayer money, instead of relying on private contractors who have failed to deliver appropriate housing. Responsibility must also be shared evenly across the UK—the opposite of the flawed model that sees heavily concentrated areas of asylum hotels that are easy targets for far-right hate.
Enver Solomon CEO, Refugee Council
How to tackle online hate
The riots that erupted across the UK starkly reflected the overlap between misinformation, disinformation and its weaponisation by extremists. While those responsible for stoking the violence must primarily be held accountable for their actions, platforms such as X and Telegram in particular need to reflect on their duty of care to users and responsibility to make a positive contribution to our democracy (“Elon Musk’s misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport much worse”, Prospect online, August).
As a country we have the legal tools to hold offenders accountable both online and offline but lack the resources to enforce the law at the scale required online. We therefore urgently need a coherent strategy for understanding and countering disinformation and online extremism including by establishing a National Centre for Open-Source Intelligence. This would support the police, prosecutors and regulators by assembling the experts and technology required to analyse and investigate harmful content affecting the UK. Existing initiatives are fragmented and often underfunded. This new centre would coordinate and bolster existing efforts, ensuring that there is a rapid response to emerging online crises and attributing responsibility. This would also significantly improve the UK’s capacity to respond to and investigate the influence of hostile states and ensure that law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders are better equipped to address the threat that a Hobbesian online environment poses to our democracy.
It is only natural that social media platforms and messaging apps should be required to contribute to the costs of policing the digital space from which they profit. The “polluter pays” principle underpins the Financial Conduct Authority’s levy on banks. Why should social media be different?
Adam Hadley is founder and executive director of Tech Against Terrorism
Beside the seaside
In the debate about where to site new homes (Letters, Summer Special), the idea of updating coastal towns has been ignored despite Reform’s success in seaside locations, not least in Clacton—the nearby seaside town of Jaywick Sands has been identified as one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in England. These formerly popular towns have been allowed to decline and yet living by the sea is a dream for many of us. With more people working from home, such areas become even more desirable to live in and work from.
The transport and utilities infrastructure is already there, as well as schools, churches, shops, town halls, cinemas, and space for new housing and local facilities. Living by the sea is also much healthier!
Rosanne Bostock, Oxford
Britain’s lost future
Once again it is implied that the 1970s was a write-off and that Thatcherism was inevitable (“Thatcher’s mistake”, Summer Special). It’s possible to identify several political choices or external events which led to our “cap in hand to the IMF” moment in 1976 and show that a form of social democratic capitalism was still possible in Britain. After all, many countries in western Europe have successfully continued running such programmes.
Had Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle in 1969 won cabinet support for their industrial reforms we might have been spared the strikes and strife that led to the winter of discontent—Jim Callaghan was one of those who helped block them and it duly came back to bite him in 1979. One external event was the oil shock of 1973: vengeance by the Saudis for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war. Then there was Ted Heath and his chancellor Anthony Barber’s “Barber boom”, where credit controls were relaxed and there was a mini-boom and bust.
All this contributed to a feeling that nothing was working and that inflation was here to stay. The truth is that Whitehall got its sums wrong and the country wasn’t nearly as bankrupt as we thought. The IMF debt was paid off quite quickly on what Healey called “Sod Off Day”. In other circumstances Labour might have won in 1979 on a moderate Callaghan/Healey ticket and Mrs Thatcher might have been a footnote in history.
David Redshaw, Saltdean, East Sussex
Speaking up for libraries
Richard Ovenden (“On borrowed time”, Summer Special) rightly focuses on the threat to community libraries in Britain’s largest and oldest functioning local authority, Birmingham. But he may be a little too scathing about the alternative proposal of volunteer-led libraries. The biggest problem is that Birmingham City Council has been making noises about library “transformation” for years, but a total lack of leadership has meant there has been no community engagement and no public discussion until draconian budget cuts forced the issue this year.
In my community, the library once used by the teenaged Lee Child was already down to opening three days a week—and heaven forbid anyone should propose any out of hours activity. Its brilliant staff, however, filled those six half-days with activity that drew in the elderly and young families. Our newly formed Friends group (galvanised by the present threat) could hold the keys and enable book groups, author visits and local history sessions, among other possibilities.
The modern age demands a rethink on how people engage with books. When we had a “read-in” at the library, participants much preferred to sit around a table and talk to three local, not at all famous writers about how they create books. We should teach people how to browse—not to feel you have to read every book from cover to cover. Publishers could help if they refocused book tours on community libraries. Well integrated groups of volunteers may prove more accessible than councils. Books need to become desirable again—as they were for aspiring families a century ago.
Jon Hunt, Birmingham councillor and Private Libraries Association member
Send him homeward
It was kind of Bill Keller, an American, to go to Scotland and join a flag-waving pro-independence crowd (“The independence question”, Summer Special). Unfortunately for him, the general election results of 4th July showed that most Scots do not want to break up the UK. Total votes for the pro-Union parties (Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Reform) were 1,561,488 whereas the anti-Union parties (SNP, Greens and Alba) received 829,227 votes. That is 65 per cent for the Union and 35 per cent against.
Keller frequently referred to polls alleging that the majority of Scots favour independence. But such polls are based on the opinions of people who sign up to them. No amount of “adjusting” will turn them into a random sample of the general population. Angus Robertson, the former SNP MP and now MSP, has set up one such company, Progress Scotland, with the declared intention of advancing the separatist cause. To put it bluntly, polls that people sign up to are worthless.
Les Reid, Edinburgh
Resurrecting religion
Jemimah Steinfeld’s article (“Waking the dead”, Summer Special) on resurrecting loved ones through the medium of AI made no reference to the religion still subscribed to by a third of the world’s population that holds as a central tenet the actual resurrection of the dead, that is the Christian faith. This made her discussion of the motivations of the users of this technology disappointingly shallow. Is this avoidance out of some residue of respect, incapacity or wilful blindness?
Mike McCabe, Derbyshire
The people’s peers
Nicholas Boyle’s very interesting proposal (Letters, July) on an easy way to reform the House of Lords prompts two observations. First, consider a chamber of 400 but with seats allocated in proportion to the percentage of votes cast for each party in the Commons at the general election, rather than seats won: how democratically reflective of the views of the country would that be!
Second, he says that “governments would usually be able to get their business through the Lords” under his proposals, but surely the second chamber should be a place for considered evaluation of proposed legislation, not a rubber stamp.
Bob Le Quesne, New Zealand
David Allen Green is right to say that the British constitution lacks accountability (“State of failure”, June 2024). Save when there is a hung parliament, British governments have absolute power to do as they like, making and repealing any laws. This has created a culture of impunity.
The accountability functions should be separated from parliament and given to a largely elected People’s Council with strong inquiry powers. Individual cases should go to a comprehensive -ombudsperson service so that they no longer need to be handled by legislators. The People’s Council would also grant assent to legislation and allow citizens to place topics on the political agenda.
The powerless House of Lords and backdoor legislator the Privy Council should be abolished. The UK desperately needs a federal structure with the federal government responsible only for defence, foreign affairs, and common standards. Sovereignty should be redefined as the people of each of the four nations. A written constitution should replace the present incomprehensible mess.
David Kauders, Zug, Switzerland
Opera for all
Ian Bostridge declaring “British opera is conquering the world” (“State of the arts”, Summer Special) is timely—especially as the heritage of the late-lamented Graham Vick came fully into its own recently with the Birmingham Opera Company (BOC) production of Tippett’s New Year. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alpesh Chauhan, appeared alongside a community chorus singing and acting at an extraordinary standard, and a mind-blowingly superb cast curated by the extraordinary casting director, Sarah Playfair. BOC was working with ethnically diverse singers long before it became the obvious thing to do, and this glorious history is there for all to see in this performance. London, look and learn!
Sara Clethero, director, Opera Mint
A fond farewell
I cannot recall an elected government worse than the Conservative one that has recently been removed from office (“How to rejoin the world”, Summer Special). From David Cameron to Rishi Sunak, in 14 years Britain was unwaveringly dragged along a downward path.
Cameron’s promise to reduce yearly immigration to the tens of thousands proved an empty promise before he threw the Brexit referendum to a fed-up electorate. Enter Theresa May: a Remainer, her half-hearted attempts to deliver a Brexit Leavers wanted failed. Enter Boris Johnson, who proved to be incompetent and morally reprehensible. Enter Liz Truss to destroy the economy in 40 days and, last up, enter Sunak, who gave us the Rwanda deportation scheme, whereby hundreds of millions was spent on deporting absolutely nobody, before suddenly announcing a general election in which he told disillusioned Tory voters that if they re-elected him he would, er, begin deporting migrants to Rwanda. And now, in heavily reduced opposition, this very same collective is already cheerily talking of a new leader and winning the next election. Has there ever been a more arrogant, blinkered, out-of-touch political elite?
Stefan Badham, Portsmouth
