Missed opportunities in Rishi Sunak’s spending review | Letters

It's too easy to cut overseas aid and screw the public servants who have kept the country running while the government has been busy ladling out money to its friends, writes Nick Ward. Plus letters from Sue Rabbitt Roff, Adrian Cosker, Ian Hodge, Rae Street, Bill Bradbury, Tim Tozer and Margaret Squires

If the chancellor really wants to balance the books (Rishi Sunak says Covid economic emergency has only just begun, 25 November), he could stop shelling out money to consultants for doing (badly) the jobs that the government itself should do. He could halt funding of environmentally damaging vanity projects like HS2. Then he could stop subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, which destroy any prospect of meeting zero-carbon targets. In the longer term, we could follow the French example and make big tech companies pay their fair share of tax. But it's so much easier to cut overseas aid and screw the public servants who have kept the country running while the government has been busy ladling out money to its friends.
Nick Ward
Swanage, Dorset

When Rishi Sunak said that ideology doesn't work (Editorial, 25 November), he was acknowledging that Tory economic ideology doesn't work. He has almost daily added to the stimulus funding that looks modelled on Rooseveltian New Dealism. That did work - because jobs were created by government at the same time as the stimulus was provided. Now is the time to create a National Care Service by aligning and converting the benefits system with training into an expanded and fairly paid care workforce similar to the US Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s.
Sue Rabbitt Roff
Cellardyke, Fife