Readers' letters: It’s time for inept minister Foster to go

Minister for Future Borders and Immigration Kevin Foster’s tweet suggesting Ukrainian’s refugee families wanting to come to the UK should apply for a visa so they can come to the UK and pick fruit (later deleted) came as no surprise to me.

On January 1 2020 my au pair agency business of 15 years disappeared overnight, despite petitions and pleas from agents and hard-hit families to consider introducing some sort of youth exchange visa.

From his appointment in 2020 Kevin Foster showed no empathy or understanding for families who need childcare at weekends and in the evening, potentially forcing some women to give up work.

His suggestion that refugees, who will be mostly women with children, traumatised and potentially recently widowed, should come here and solve the labour problem for fruit farmers was breathtakingly crass and insensitive. It is time for him to go!

Dr Ruth Campbell, Stirling.

Taxing issues

Bob Marshall (letters, 26 February) is confused on Scotland’s taxes when he refers to £13 billion a year being raised in Scotland.

This refers to income tax only and the total, excluding oil and gas revenues, is £56.5 billion. The latest GERS figures showed £11.5billion raised in National Insurance contributions from Scotland whereas £8.5 billion was paid out by the DWP in pensions.

The collapse of oil revenues is down to UK policy to slash oil and gas taxes to almost zero and giving generous rebates while Norway retained petroleum taxes at 78 per cent. Channel 4 News reported that for each barrel of oil the UK received $1.72 in 2019 while Norway received $21.35.

As Brent Crude is sitting at around $100 a barrel, Scotland would be sitting on a bonanza if it taxed at Norwegian levels which could help to pay for better pensions without raising taxes.

Also, Scotland currently has an excess of oil, gas, electricity and water to export to add to our balance of trade surplus.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh.

Pension premium

Jane Lax writes (letters, February 28) that she does not believe that an independent Scotland can afford to pay state pensions at the present level. But then most Unionists believe Scotland only survives on the generosity of England!It is also the norm for Unionists to believe that Scotland is the only country in Europe that could not maintain a good standard of living for its pensioners.

Surely these Unionists have never visited our small, independent neighbours like Denmark, Ireland or Holland, all of whom have much higher standards of living than Scotland.As for State pensions, the UK has the worst state pension of all our European neighbours. A UK pensioner’s basic state pension is less than 30 per cent of the average working wage when they retire. Austria and Holland are best with 90 per cent. Ireland has 62 per cent and no other EU country has less than 40 per cent.It would be astonishing if Scotland could not do better than the shameful record of the UK.

James Duncan, Edinburgh.

Truss misplaced

There will be less chance of a peace settlement with Putin if our clearly undiplomatic Foreign Secretary is allowed to keep pronouncing state-ments like "Putin must lose''. She seems to be clueless with regard to negotiation.

To such a misogynistic dictator, this is the proverbial red rag to a bull. Some form of compromise will have to be reached. All out defeat is unlikely to be countenanced.

Derek Sharp, Edinburgh.

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