Letters: The Tories should listen to voters and take Britain out of the ECHR

SIR – If the Tories want to stay in power, they must pledge to take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights (report, August 10). Otherwise, I’m afraid the Labour Party will win the next election, and we will have no hope of controlling our borders. 

Why won’t the Conservative Party listen to the country?

Jim Riley
Macclesfield, Cheshire

SIR – Left-wing lawyers have thwarted every attempt to secure our borders by using current legislation to their advantage. 

If the laws of the land are impeding us, change them. If the European Convention on Human Rights is the stumbling block, leave it. I think the French could easily deal with the small boats crisis through organised intelligence, but they clearly choose not to do so. We are a sovereign nation and we should take control.

Mick Ferrie
Mawnan Smith, Cornwall

SIR – The ECHR is based on the idea that none of the signatories can be trusted to respect human rights when governing themselves; they are, however, competent to propose candidates for the Court to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Freedom House classifies two members of the Council of Europe, Turkey and Azerbaijan, as “not free” and several others as “partly free”.

Robert Edwards
Hornchurch, Essex

SIR – The suggestion that Britain could leave the ECHR should concern those who care not only about human rights but also criminal justice in Britain.

One of the successes of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement, forged with our European counterparts post-Brexit, was Part Three, which ensures that law enforcement co-operation on criminal justice continues. Crucially, the terms offer the possibility for this to be terminated should either party denounce the ECHR. Withdrawal from the ECHR could therefore be damaging in more ways than one. Not only is Part Three key for co-operation with our European neighbours over the challenge of trafficking across the Channel, but it is also essential for our law enforcement agencies to be able to access intelligence (DNA, fingerprints, criminal records etc) on wider criminal-justice matters. Given that crime in Britain increasingly involves international players and elements, the loss to the police of that intelligence would be a seriously retrograde step.

The House of Lords Justice Committee wrote recently to Suella Braverman highlighting that risk in the context of the Illegal Migration Bill. Any formal Tory policy to depart from the ECHR would mean a similar risk to the future of Part Three, and disastrous consequences for policing.

Rebecca Niblock
Criminal litigation partner
Kingsley Napley LLP
London EC2
 

Saving Oxford Street

SIR – Nicholas Boys Smith attempts to justify the decision to block Marks & Spencer’s proposed redevelopment in Oxford Street (“Don’t let the relentless ‘march of modernism’ destroy our heritage”, Comment, telegraph.co.uk, August 9). This is hardly surprising, given his role as a close adviser to Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, who overruled his independent planning inspector and refused our scheme.

He compares the fate of Dudley’s historic Crooked House pub, built in 1765, with the much more recent Marks & Spencer store in Oxford Street. Dudley was rightly proud of its heritage building, but most Londoners, especially our colleagues and customers who work and shop there, know that our store – a collection of ramshackle, unsustainable buildings cobbled together over recent decades – is not at all comparable.

Londoners also know that something must be done to save Oxford Street – once the jewel in London’s shopping crown. On Wednesday we saw another reminder of how bad things are. The street was practically locked down by police to prevent major unrest planned on social media. It’s a sad fact that crime has become worse as Oxford Street has fallen into disrepair, with empty shops, littered streets and fewer visitors.

With the support of Westminster Council, the Greater London Authority and many of our retail neighbours, Marks & Spencer wanted to start the fightback. We hoped to reverse the failing fortunes of Oxford Street by redeveloping our store to provide a modern, sustainable building that would have regenerated the area, created thousands of jobs, drastically cut carbon emissions, and attracted new investment.

But sadly, thanks to Mr Gove’s decision, Oxford Street remains in limbo. More worryingly, developers across the country have put the brakes on, concerned about moving ahead with essential regeneration schemes in case they face similar top-down decisions – which should be made by local planners, who are best placed to determine the needs of communities.

Mr Boys Smith calls us foolish for wanting to regenerate Oxford Street. Perhaps he also thinks that of those who look to thriving high streets and town centres for their homes and livelihoods. It’s time he and Mr Gove got out of their Westminster echo chamber and delivered the levelling-up we’ve been promised for so long.

Sacha Berendji
Operations director, Marks & Spencer
London W2
 

Driven to fossil fuels by a flaky heat pump

SIR – My wife and I moved into our 18th-century house six years ago. The previous owners had installed a ground-source heat pump (Letters, August 10), which we found to work – temperamentally. The room heating (not hot water) was backed up by a small non-condensing oil boiler. When the heat pump reached the age of about 10 years it failed. 

Finding a competent person to assess the problem and give an estimate for repairs was not easy. The company that had installed the system had long since gone out of business and the nearest engineer was over 100 miles away. The verdict was that the pump would have cost between £4,000 and £7,000 to repair, and that we would have to wait several months – without a hot-water supply – before work could be undertaken.

Instead, we asked an engineer to bypass the heat pump and install a new, bigger condensing oil boiler in place of the old one. This got us up and running again in only six weeks. It reduced our heating energy costs by about 36 per cent, and our carbon footprint – a result of the higher efficiency of the new condensing boiler compared with the old model, and that the heat pump’s coefficient of performance had been considerably less than that often quoted.

Professor Gareth Rees
Cowlinge, Suffolk

SIR – I have noticed that in the debate over power generation, tidal energy has disappeared. Why is that? We will never run out of tidal power and the running costs will just be the maintenance. Yes, installation costs will be high, but can we afford to ignore this clean source of electricity?

Chris Green
Prestwood, Buckinghamshire
 

Huguenot pork pies

SIR – Patricia Follett’s description of her pies (Letters, August 10) made me long for a traditional Midlands version. 

After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, French protestant Huguenots were persecuted and many came to Britain, settling in various areas, including the Midlands. They established a tradition of charcuterie and pork pies. 
Excellent versions are available in supermarkets and have a following of discerning fans.

Sheila Williams
Ascot, Berkshire
 

Cork collection

SIR – For years I have collected corks (Letters, August 8) with amazing projects in mind. This year the large cupboard was emptied and the corks used at the base of plant pots, for reuse next year. New stock can accumulate in the shed.

Jacky Staff
Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh
 

Calling all galleries: go phone-free in future

SIR – I visited the blockbuster Banksy exhibition in Glasgow this week. On arrival, visitors handed over their mobile phones to be sealed into a foam pouch, which was handed back to them to carry. A gallery attendant released it on the way out. This meant nobody could use a phone within the exhibition space.

In contrast, I visited the Vermeer exhibition in Amsterdam earlier this year, and all attendees seemed to want to do was take a photo and move on to the next painting. Very few people appeared content just to stand and look, but their visits were somewhat marred by the number of people jostling to get the perfect shot.

In Glasgow, nobody seemed to object to the procedure, and everyone’s experience was enhanced by the lack of mobile phones – including, I suspect, those who would otherwise have been clicking away.

Please could all major exhibitions adopt this brilliant idea?

Hilary Aitken
Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire
 

Kew’s herbarium

SIR – You report (August 10) Kew Gardens’ ridiculous plan to move the most important herbarium in the world away from the site at Kew. 

The Royal Botanic Gardens has a worldwide reputation because of the integration of an outstanding garden, an important research laboratory, a large herbarium and an excellent library. Alongside these facilities, it has an excellent education programme for those of school age through to PhD students. 

I agree wholeheartedly with Alan Titchmarsh that the herbarium has to remain at Kew if this international reputation is to be maintained. Anything else would seriously damage all the good research that Kew does on biodiversity and the conservation of plants.

Professor Sir Ghillean Prance 
Former director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Lyme Regis, Dorset
 

How atheists argue

SIR – Richard Luscombe (Letters, August 9) is correct: believing that God exists does not constitute proof that God exists. Similarly, however, belief that God does not exist can never entail the conclusion that God cannot exist. So we ask: what proof for the existence of God would atheists require?

The scientific method stipulates that what cannot be measured, calculated or observed is beyond the parameters of scientific inquiry. Any attempted proof of the existence of God would therefore be a contradiction of the terms of science. It is hardly to be wondered, then, that those who claim to think scientifically tend to dismiss any proof for the existence of a deity – because this goes beyond the parameters for proof set by science.

It also follows that the atheist is bound to rule out any argument for the existence of God, since the conclusion has already been determined by the conditions imposed by the atheist on the argument itself.

Rev Harry Beverley Tasker
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
 

American manners

SIR – As a Briton who lived in America for several years, I was amazed at Douglas Carswell’s insistence on Americans’ better manners – and his example of never having heard the F-word at a football game (Comment, telegraph.co.uk, August 9). 

He has clearly never set foot in New York.

Eric Sukumaran
Oxford
 

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