Tougher immigration checks are bad news for everyone living in the UK

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It now costs £973 to register a child’s citizenship application — up from £386 in 2010 and 22 times more than the fee in Germany (Getty Images)

The Brutish (not misspelt) Government is trying to create a compliant environment, newly rebranded from hostile environment, for immigrants in the UK.

Landlords must check applicants to ensure that only those entitled (legal migrants and British citizens) have access to accommodation. All well and good if a landlord was qualified to check the status of individuals. This will undoubtedly affect those citizens who don’t have passports, or have non-British sounding names, or god forbid an accent. I can foresee many individuals being turning away when they are perfectly entitled.

The NHS must check to see if any would-be patients are eligible for treatment, so a similar outcome can be expected – so god help those who are taken ill, and don’t happen to have a passport with them.

Irrespective of what is said, it must be a passport – no other document proves nationality and entitlement, and even then not in all circumstances. In any case who carries passports or similar documentation with them at all times?

Banks are now required to trawl through millions of records to see if any belong to those unlawfully in Britain. Place of birth doesn’t prove nationality – a bank will only be able to positively identify those individuals who are ineligible by having access to immigration records, which seems unlikely, or they must again resort to judging the individual by name etc., and again employ a best-guess scenario.

I can predict that some, in fact quite a few, may have their accounts frozen and be forced to attend the bank to prove their heritage. This will also inevitably result in the need to produce a passport when an account is opened – great if you have one but depending on what you read 20 to 25 per cent of the population do not.

Consider if the same rules were to apply to schools. Are schools going to be asked to check children’s entitlement at the school gates? Don’t forget a person’s immigration status can change from one day to the next. Is this what we want for children, education refused?

All of these things will obviously impact on ordinary people; those immigrants legally in Britain and British citizens alike, in particular citizens with dual nationality.

If the population of Britain are willing to sacrifice their own civil liberties in order to control immigration then so be it. But I for one am not willing to do so.

Is Brexit more important than principles and liberty?

Robert Greasley
Iserlohn, Germany

The case for an independent Scotland has never been worse

It’s fascinating to note that according to the First Minister the case for an independent Scotland “has never been greater”. I expect that the over two million Scots that voted against independence, her 21 MPs that lost their seats in June and over one million other Scots who voted to leave the EU would strongly disagree with her assessment.

Quite how this need “has never been greater” is not explained to us. There has been no “Brexit bounce” that the SNP anticipated. Dissatisfaction with the SNP’s decade of power is growing, and if not for the support of the Scottish Green Party the SNP couldn’t even pass legislation for another independence referendum anyway.

David Bone
Girvan

Crackdown on landlords

Ben Chu writes of the shortage of houses for people under the age of 40. How far is this due to the greed of people who own multiple houses for rent? This should not be allowed as it has resulted in rents being pushed up.

V Pitt
London SE3

I voted Labour – but we need another solution

You have to admire Jeremy Corbyn. He is a principled man whose beliefs and values have remained constant throughout his political career. But he should not get carried away by his current popularity.

In the last general election, I voted Labour for the first time in my life, not because I had any great faith in their policies, but because by doing so, I hoped that in a small way it would help to derail Brexit. I suspect that a fairly significant number of voters did so for the same reason. Labour's current Brexit wish list, consisting of a soft exit, retaining membership of the single market and the customs union, with controls on immigration, is preferable to a hard Brexit, but unfortunately is no more attainable than the negotiating position apparently adopted by the Government.

Moreover, Labour's aspirations in respect of renationalisation, tuition fees and housing etc, admirable as they may be, are unachievable without a massive increase in borrowing or taxes or both.

As for the polls, I would suggest that these are driven by a deep dissatisfaction with our inept Prime Minister and an incompetent Government which is being led by the nose by a small group of extreme Brexiteers intent on taking the country back to a future in which the country tries to dominate and exploit former colonies in an attempt to make the country an economic powerhouse based on a Victorian era model – an economic chasm if ever there was one.

Never in my lifetime (I’m in my mid-sixities) has the country been faced by so many difficult social and economic problems and neither of the two main parties seem to have viable solutions. There has to be a third way.

Antony Robson
Westbury

Arty money

Why do we need to have people featured on our banknotes at all? I appreciate that images of the well-known may be difficult for forgers to replicate, but there must be works of art by artists past and present whose work would be suitable, colourful, and refreshing.

Ian Turnbull
Carlisle

A simple solution

If a politician or other person is due to make an important speech and the speaker is unwell but the speech cannot be postponed, it should be normally acceptable practice for a substitute to read the speech. Theresa May could have nominated (say) Amber Rudd to read her recent speech while she herself was seated next to the substitute. If this had been done, we and the media could have paid attention to the contents of the speech instead of concentrating on the health of the speaker.

Sam Boote
Nottingham