Turkey’s crucial role in the migrant crisis

At today’s EU-Turkey summit unerring political determination will be needed to secure clear Turkish commitments. The first step is the establishment of a clear and honest dialogue with Turkey, Russia, Syria, Iraq and regional powerhouses. And whatever we think of Bashar al Assad, he is in the same position as Milosevic before him. Peace, as the current truce shows, also relies on him. This does not mean that he will not be accountable for his actions.

In this unprecedented, inhuman and degrading crisis for both the EU and Turkey, the world is watching us. We cannot wait for another terror attack on our soil for co-operation on fighting radicalisation. Nor can we wait for increases in xenophobia to find a migration policy worthy of our values.

Rachida Dati
Member of the European Parliament and former French Minister of Justice

Sir, The deployment of Nato warships to the Mediterranean and General Breedlove’s comments on the refugee and migrant crisis show the paucity of the Western political response to this destabilising and dangerous situation.

Greece and Italy are members of the EU. Turkey, Greece and Italy are all members of Nato, and form part of Nato’s southern flank. Nato has rapid reaction troops which have carried out joint training exercises on that flank.

It seems astonishing that the European members of Nato have not deployed these troops to assist border forces to set up and run refugee camps in order to hold those people crossing the borders in safety, relative comfort and quarantine; and to allow identification of those who are genuine refugees and those who are economic migrants or who might pose a threat to the countries they are entering. The use of troops in this way would have reassured both Greece and Italy of their importance to the rest of the EU and of the willingness of the EU to support them. It would also have encouraged Turkey into the sphere of EU influence and made Nato’s concerns clear to that nation. It would also have sent a clear and necessary signal to Russia and Syria.

This failure to activate a land-based, border-focused Nato response to the refugee crisis shows a lack of moral and political leadership on the part of our elected governments.

Peter Louth
Truro, Cornwall

Our digital future

Sir, It is now clear that the ability to capture, transmit and utilise a wide range of digital data is likely to transform many aspects of society, including healthcare. The recent debate about the quality of our broadband infrastructure and the regulatory objections to the takeover of O2 by Three suggest that nationally we are not yet paying sufficient attention to the infrastructure needed to ensure this digital future is achieved.

In the field of health, there is little question now that digital tools are likely to transform the way we deliver care and undertake research in biomedicine. In order for this field of “big data” to be successful, there is the need for the highest-quality infrastructure, both in terms of fibre-based broadband networks and a thoroughly integrated mobile data infrastructure. Creating the best possible integrated internet and telecommunications capacity in the UK will require the efforts of large, well-capitalised and consolidated businesses. We are unlikely to reap the benefits of the digital revolution if the necessary infrastructure is fragmented and under-resourced.

Professor Sir John Bell
Regius Professor of Medicine, University of Oxford

Farmers want out

Sir, The letter signed by the great and the good of British agriculture (March 5) is titled to suggest that they speak for the whole industry — “Farmers back EU”. This is not so. There are many of us who don’t. We don’t believe the NFU’s scare stories of a woeful subsidy-free existence after Brexit. We resent the absurdity of EU rules and regulations which serve no purpose other than to provide employment for inspectors. We resent having to tug our forelocks to EU agriculture commissioners who are free from any democratic mandate, but nevertheless are given the red-carpet treatment every time they visit.

We look in awe at the EU’s inability to have a set of accounts signed off by auditors, and wonder how our bank managers would react if our farm accounts were kept to the same standards. And, most of all, we stand astonished at the letter writers’ dire warnings of “uncertainty” for the industry if we leave the EU. One certainty seems to have escaped their collective notice: being in the EU has done nothing to prevent the worst agricultural crisis in many decades enveloping UK agriculture.

Charlie Flindt
Alresford, Hants

Photography home

Sir, This week’s decision by the Science Museum to relinquish the major part of the photography collection now in the National Media Museum, Bradford, is a backward step.

The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (its name until 2006) began assembling its world-ranking collection 33 years ago. It built a team of experts from a wide spectrum of photographic art and science. For its first decade, many leading photographers from Britain and abroad exhibited there, and the museum attracted eight million visitors. At the time, this was more than any other museum outside London, and more than all but the big five in the capital.

Less than three years ago, the Science Museum opened Media Space — a £4.5-million gallery designed as a London showcase for the Bradford collections. The Science Museum’s director said that there was “a definite correlation between art and science,” but the planned closure of Media Space this year suggests that he has changed his mind. The present move to separate the art and science of photography reverses prevailing worldwide practice.

Moving the majority of the collection away from Yorkshire goes against government policy when the museum was opened — to put such facilities outside London — and against the present government’s “northern powerhouse” strategy. A number of us who have deposited our photographs in the museum did so specifically because we wanted our work to be preserved in the north.

These proposals have consequences too great to be left to internal decisions within the Science Museum group. Has it explored making the museum independent? Or handing it over to the City of Bradford, which has spent considerable sums of money on it? Photography in Britain needs a national home and identity.

Many of us would welcome the opportunity to be involved in trying to retain the collection in a national home for photography — preferably in the north of England.

David Hockney, artist and photographer; Don McCullin, photographer; Martin Parr, photographer; Mike Leigh, film-maker; Francis Hodgson, Professor in Culture of Photography, Brighton University; Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of History of Art, University of Oxford; Roger Watson, curator, Fox Talbot Museum; Grace Robertson, photographer

Stay-at-home kids

Sir, The 45 per cent rise in home-schooling in the last five years (report , March 5), suggests that “missing out on places at the best schools” and “excessive testing” are primarily to blame. Statistics suggest another reason. Between 2012-13 and 2014-15, fines issued by 98 councils for pupil absences rose from 30,512 to 86,010. Fear of fines and criminal records awaken interest in home-schooling, where family events such as holidays and funerals become learning events, not causes to be punished.

Peter Saunders
Salisbury, Wilts

Sir, Compulsory registration of home-educated children would only achieve a diversion of resources from an already struggling system. The state has failed — sometimes tragically — to provide an adequate education for these children, which is why parents have taken up the task themselves. From this position of failure, the state is in no position to judge.

Carolyn and Mike Crawshaw
St Albans, Herts

Hard knocks

Sir, Jeff Probyn’s assertion that “rugby is no more dangerous than cycling, horse riding, hockey or football” (Thunderer, March 2) is not supported by the facts. On March 19, 2009, The Times reported that “67,000 rugby injuries require a trip to A&E in the UK every year, and studies of competitive rugby players have found there is one injury per person for every ten games played, or around two injuries per match. That rate makes rugby a more dangerous sport than boxing, mountain climbing and even American football.”

Partly because of the statistics — but mostly because, as a 14-year-old boy playing in a school rugby match, I witnessed the death on the pitch of a friend and teammate — my son was only ever allowed to attend football- playing schools.

Anthony H Ratcliffe
London W1

Song for England

Sir, Our national anthem has its origins in the Baroque era and possibly earlier (letters, March 5). I can never understand why it is now invariably played with inappropriate, heavy orchestration. The bass part of the middle section is always played too loudly and the whole piece sounds as though it is stuck in a peat bog. During my time at the Royal Academy of Music, I remember it being performed by a strings-only ensemble in a much lighter vein — it sounded wonderful and happy.

Marsha Head
Plymouth, Devon

Sir, The English rugby team and supporters have not “procured” the national anthem, we have simply not dropped it as the other teams of the UK chose to do.

Chris Wheeldon
Worcester Park, Surrey

Sir, If you want to enjoy the national anthem played properly at the right speed, you need to hear it on a barrel organ.

AG Eaton
Tonbridge, Kent

Purrsuasion

Sir, Daniel Finkelstein is a lucky man (Notebook, March 5). The cat has decided that he is capable of being a hunter and is bringing in a test subject for him to practise on. To stop the tests all he needs to do is catch the mouse to demonstrate his ability to fend for himself. The problem then is that the cat might then produce harder and harder test subjects. Ours provided in succession lizards, rabbits and finally a stoat. We passed.

Martin Avons
Attleborough, Norfolk

By the book

Sir, My late mother, the author Elisabeth Beresford and the creator of the Wombles, would have been most upset to read that a Womble could be suspected of being the Wimbledon Prowler (“Police closing in on Wimbledon Prowler after hundreds of break-ins,” March 5). Wombles never steal, they simply recycle people’s rubbish and I am sure they are on full alert to help to catch the thief.

I fear that Great Uncle Bulgaria will be most upset when he reads his copy of The Times, which is delivered daily to him on Wimbledon Common.

Kate Robertson

Rudgwick, W Sussex