Control orders and home-grown extremism

Sir, Clare Forges is correct that, in the light of terror attacks, the Action This Day instinct should be resisted. In an election campaign the parties will naturally try to score points wherever they can, but in truth they are all arguing over marginal adjustments in the fight against terrorism. The UK’s terrorist problem is now essentially home-grown and there is little more to be achieved by greater protection, more visible policing, and so on, without undermining the sort of society we want to be. There is much more to be achieved in providing community intelligence to the authorities and having the authorities act on it promptly and appropriately.

There is even more to be achieved by cutting off the determined killers from their potential sources of (even grudging) support. As the IRA proved, a terrorist network can exist with just a smidgeon of sympathy within its own community. The real prize for counterterrorism in the coming decade will be to demolish the myths that link the violent jihadists to the rest of our community. There is no silver bullet for doing that, but the objective should be very clear.
Professor Michael Clarke
Director, Royal United Services Institute, 2008-15

Sir, It is undoubtedly unfortunate for the car insurer Zurich to find that it insured Khalid Masood’s tool of terror, but many injury practitioners, myself included, would consider it liable to meet any judgment the victims of his attack obtain against his estate. That is the clear effect of the common law combined with domestic and European legislation, regardless of the policy terms. Unfortunately for the victims of the Manchester bombing, Salman Abedi chose to attack with a nail bomb, leaving them to rely on state provision under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. The victims of Masood’s Westminster Bridge attack are therefore entitled to unlimited compensatory awards (some will recover millions) and their legal costs will be paid in addition, but the Manchester victims will see their awards capped at a maximum of £500,000 (though many will receive much less), damages for loss of earnings limited to statutory sick pay and any legal costs will come out of the award.

Victims of the London Bridge attack fall into both camps. Those injured by the van will receive full compensation and those attacked with a knife will get far less than they need.

It is a grotesque quirk of our system that whether or not a victim of a terror attack can access suitable and adequate financial support is determined not by their reasonable needs but by the jihadist’s choice of weapon.
Richard D Edwards
Potter Rees Dolan solicitors, Manchester

ARMY CUTBACKS
Sir, I disagree with your leader that the recent deployment of troops onto our streets was an “appropriate response” (“Defence of the Realm”, June 5). It wasn’t, for lots of reasons, not least that it gave the false impression of fragility in our day-to-day security that the situation didn’t (and still doesn’t) warrant. The context in which the generals met the police’s request with such alacrity, though, is clear. The army is facing further cuts and, in the absence of a war to fight, it is keen to present itself as having “relevance and utility”.

The trouble is, there will be a war to fight at some stage. Ideally, we’d like to win it next time too. And this is where numbers matter. However “smart” we make troops they cannot be in two places at once; quantity has a quality all of its own. Your leader was right. Our politicians undoubtedly need to grab the MoD by the scruff of its neck and demand more bang for our taxpayers’ buck. But that only gets you so far. General Montecuccoli was right when he said: “Three things win wars: money, money and money.”
Lincoln Jopp, MC
Commanding officer 1st Battalion Scots Guards 2008-11, London EC4

CALL TO STRENGTHEN NHS FINANCES
Sir, A strong NHS is vital for a thriving population, workforce and economy. Public spending on healthcare accounts for just over 7 per cent of our national wealth. That is not enough to cope with the ageing population and other cost pressures.

Projections by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility suggest that a real-terms funding increase of about £30 billion a year is needed in five years’ time to enable the NHS to deal with these pressures. None of the main political parties has pledged enough to cover even half of that, while the share of our national wealth spent on healthcare would fall under all of their plans.

The next government must act quickly to strengthen the health service’s finances in the short term, as well as developing a sustainable, long-term approach to funding the NHS, to put an end to the cycle of feast and famine. This should include establishing an independent body to assess and advise on health and social care funding needs.

The NHS must also focus on improving efficiency and use additional funding to reform care to meet changing population needs. Failure to provide sufficient funding and improve efficiency will result in longer waiting times for patients, poorer access to cost-effective drugs and treatments and a decline in NHS and social care.
Jennifer Dixon, CEO, the Health Foundation; Nigel Edwards, CEO, Nuffield Trust; Chris Ham, CEO, the King’s Fund

WOBBLING IN 1987
Sir, Further to Matt Ridley’s article “We wobbled in 1987 too — but look at us now” (June 5), what he omits to say is that also in 1987 the Single European Act came into force under the premiership of a Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Might it be that the establishment and extension of this single market has been an important reason for the growth and development he so rightly describes, a single market that we now risk losing under our current Conservative prime minister?
Jennifer Bovaird
Cambridge

CORBYN AND YOUTH
Sir, Charlotte Gill (Thunderer, June 5) suggests that Labour can only win by exploiting the political ignorance of young people and “gimmicks”. Her article does not counter the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn’s focus on young people is a rational result of more than one million young people registering to vote for this election, having their voices heard and ceasing to be a political irrelevance, nor how there is an objective difference between this and the Conservatives’ focus on older generations.
Michael Bolton
Bristol Students’ Union

INEFFECTIVE PUBLIC POLICY ON DRUGS
Sir, I am grateful to Nicky Saunter and the other signatories (“Drugs policy”, letter, June 3) for their open acknowledgement that the police have adopted de facto decriminalisation of drugs. This demonstrable fact can indeed be accurately described as “decades of ineffective public policy”. Yet until now the existence of this semi-official strategy has often been vigorously denied by many of those who seek the further relaxation of our drug laws. They have instead sought to blame our problems on a fictional “prohibition”. The “escalating crises” to which Ms Saunter refers may well be largely caused by our complete failure to interdict demand for illegal drugs, while making grandiose, ostentatious and predictably unsuccessful attempts to solve the problem by interdicting supply.
Peter Hitchens
London W8

DAPPLED CYCLISTS
Sir, Further to Edward Lucas’s article (“We cyclists have to stop our lawless ways”, June 2), I have been trying for some time to interest politicians in a possible law that would make cyclists wear, at all times, a high-viz jacket or a high-viz strap across their backs and fronts. In poor light or in dappled light under trees a cyclist is often invisible, especially to motorists coming from behind. I am sure this would be a sensible and popular law.
Angus Pelham Burn
Aboyne, Aberdeenshire

RETIRED UNINJURED
Sir, Oxford academics may well be right to challenge the university about rules that force them to retire at the age of 67 (report, June 1). However, I agree with the great Texan surgeon Denton Cooley when he said that in surgery it was better to retire a year too early than a second too late.
Sir Terence English, FRCS
Oxford

COMETH THE HOUR
Sir, Like Carol Midgley (“Mobiles are to blame for curse of the latecomer”, June 2), I hate lateness at meetings. I once left home at 5am to get to a 10am meeting in London. My client rolled in half an hour late, with everyone else following suit because they knew his reputation. I am trying to develop a different attitude at work, and start to talk at my own meetings exactly one minute after the start time. I also ban entry after two minutes. It saves time in the long run.
Adrian Pope
Harpford, Devon

PAINTED PERFUME
Sir, Applying perfume with a brush (“Forget sprays and put on perfume with a paintbrush”, June 3) is not as silly as it sounds. A few days ago I was talking with a farmer on the Isle of Skye who uses a similar technique to apply weedkiller to bracken, a process apparently known as “weed wiping”. This put the weedkiller in the correct place, affecting only the weeds of the appropriate height.
Andrew Sanderson
Spennymoor, Co Durham

ON YOUR ST MARK’S
Sir, G Franco (letter, June 5) thinks that “true aficionados” should be allowed to enter Venice while “tourists” should make do with an ersatz replica on the mainland. The snobbery inherent in such a view is so preposterous that it can only have been intended in humour.

Consequently, it should surely have been typed in “ironics” (letter, June 5) and printed at the bottom right of your letters page.
Dr Richard Braithwaite
Pondwell, Isle of Wight

Letters to the Editor should be sent to: letters@thetimes.co.uk