Times letters: Requiring all migrants to be fluent in English

Sir, A good standard of English is the cornerstone of successful refugee integration, enabling refugees to find work and go on to contribute to our communities and our prosperity. The Refugee Council has been running integration services since the aftermath of the Second World War, and we know that refugees are desperate to improve their English. The public strongly back supporting refugees to integrate, including through English lessons.

However, many refugees cannot get the teaching they need. Charities and councils do what they can but the government must significantly improve the provision of courses to ensure that refugees can access good-quality language learning. Without the support to make it happen, higher English requirements for refugees settling in Britain will make integration far more difficult, thereby failing refugees and the public.
Enver Solomon
Chief executive, Refugee Council

Sir, “All migrants will have to be fluent in English” translates very well to all migrant flows, so all UK citizens taking up residence in Spain and France should be required to be fluent in the language of their new home.
Professor John Whitelegg
Ledbury, Herefordshire

Sir, Regarding the need for all immigrants to be fluent in English, the ability to produce “simple, connected text” and to use English “flexibly and effectively”, producing “clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects” would be an admirable aim for many of the English native speakers that I come across.
Michael Alpert
Professor emeritus of the history of Spain, London NW6

Sir, Fluency is not everything in being able to communicate in English. I find some accents almost impenetrable. “Received pronunciation” is pooh-poohed today, and regarded as elitist. It’s interesting though that two of the best-known BBC voices on Radio 4 are Neil Nunes, from Jamaica, and Viji Alles, from Sri Lanka.
Christopher Tiller
London SW16

Sir, As someone who went to school in Newcastle upon Tyne, I think many of my former classmates would struggle to demonstrate sufficient fluency in English to be allowed to stay in the UK.
David Johnston
Athelstaneford, East Lothian

VE Day memories

Sir, As a rather minor veteran of the Second World War and the Cold War, I can only admire Max Hastings’s magnificent article and hope it is circulated to our MPs and made a basis of urgent action (“It’s a wonder our reliance on US lasted so long”, May 7; letters, May 8). My father, who received one of the lovely little brass boxes at Christmas 1914, gave it to me to play with when I was small. It used to contain sweets and cigarettes and still had in it a pencil mounted in a brass cartridge case. I still have the box, bright and polished. However, it was actually given to servicemen not from Queen Mary but from Princess Mary, the Princess Royal of the time, and the equivalent then, as it were, of Princess Anne now. It is her young head that is portrayed on the lid.
David Hawksley
Commander (ret’d); Bournemouth

• VE Day as it happened: how the European war ended in real time

Sir, On VE Day, aged 12, I was on a ship in a convoy approaching Gibraltar through the Med, with our destroyer escort occasionally disappearing from view. My friend and I shared a cabin with a man who spent much of his time peering through the porthole with binoculars. When he started injecting himself our fears were confirmed: he was clearly a German spy. The captain, when we reported this, promised to look into it. The next day he told us that our fellow passenger was not a spy but a keen birdwatcher and a diabetic. As we approached Gibraltar we saw a long line of U-boats on the surface flying white flags of surrender. A week later, on a beautiful sunny day, we sailed into Liverpool, which was much battered but unbowed.
Anthony O’Connor
Barnstaple, Devon

Sir, I should like to thank Michael F Ridd (letter, May 8) for evoking fond memories of the 1950s. As I was born towards the end of the Second World War much of my childhood was spent in the 1940s as well. There was food rationing, and we had no phone, washing machine, refrigerator, TV or computer. When the weather was fine my brother and I and other children played in the back lane: football with a garage door for a goal, cricket with an old oil drum as a wicket. We climbed trees, went scrumping and picked blackberries in the local woods. If it was raining or cold we used our imagination to play inside: a chair became a horse, a motorbike or the helm of a pirate ship. They were happy times, and I am with Nigel Farage on this. Furthermore, I do not envy the youth of today.
Alan Ridley
Surbiton, Surrey

Wisdom of closer relations with EU

Sir, As one of Jake Richards’s Rother Valley constituents, I was pleased to see his Thunderer (“Brexit voters can see the need for deals with the EU”, May 7). I welcome his focus on the need to rebuild relationships with the EU, especially in the light of global financial and political turmoil, and I accept that rejoining the EU is off the agenda. However, even though he is an impressive, active local MP, I fear he underestimates the enthusiasm of his constituents (and others in similar constituencies, many of whom did not vote Labour in the local elections) for reworking our relationship with the EU. Labour should emphasise historic and future connections to Europe rather than allowing the populist right to dictate what matters, but this will need bold, confident, collective promotion as well as clear explanation of the party’s policies.
Professor Kath Woodward
Letwell, Notts

Sir, Your leading article (“Mending the Threads”, May 5) and the Thunderer by Jake Richards advocate more EU assistance and flexibility, including on illegal immigration, in a changed world before the EU-UK summit on May 19. If Britain was able to put its own house in order — starting with the implementation of a national identity document where cards are either not issued, as in Denmark, or issued only on a voluntary basis, as in Finland and ten other EU countries — such negotiations would have a much higher chance of bearing fruit.
Christian Williams
Espoo, Finland

Party for one

Sir, It is a rare delight to be able to agree so wholeheartedly with someone who cannot find a good reason to stop sitting on the political fence, so full marks to Alice Thomson (“Five parties, and I can’t vote for any of them”, May 7; letters, May 8). Perhaps we need a Quandary Party. I vaguely recollect that Mark Twain had a thought along those lines — not that anyone took any notice.
William Hatcher
Kinton, Shropshire

Disability pay gap

Sir, Further to your article on the government’s plans for mandatory disability employment and pay gap reporting (May 5), these plans will be crucial in enabling employers to track their disability employment outcomes, thereby helping to reduce the country’s almost 30 per cent disability employment gap. However, it is disappointing that the Business Disability Forum (BDF) has “not decided whether to support or reject” these plans, especially given that its own research shows that 70 per cent of employers feel mandatory disability reporting should be introduced, and 50 per cent say this would improve disabled people’s experiences of work.

This raises the question as to why the BDF doesn’t follow the conclusions from its own research and join the Centre for Social Justice, the Institute of Directors plus the 250 signatories to the Disability Employment Charter and throw its weight wholeheartedly behind the government’s mandatory reporting plans.
Professor Kim Hoque
Co-founder, the Disability Employment Charter

Feelgood artworks

Sir, Rhys Blakely reports a finding by a research team at Cambridge University that concludes that viewing art can “free us from everyday anxieties” (“Gazing at art helps you see the big picture”, May 7). However, these findings, based on 187 visitors to Kettle’s Yard gallery, only serve to confirm what artists have long known. Van Gogh stated that “Art is to console those who are broken by life,” while Picasso stressed, “When I enter the studio I leave my body at the door.” These are sentiments that many working artists experience on a daily basis.
David Breuer-Weil
Artist, London NW11

Indian trade deal

Sir, A trade deal with India may be good news (letter, May 8) but we need to ensure it does not open the door to further immigration from the subcontinent. Indian workers temporarily in the UK should be just that — temporary. Rather than exempting Indians working in the UK from making national insurance contributions, it would be better if they were required to pay it in the usual way but were entitled to full reimbursement once they had returned to India. That way there would at least be some incentive for such workers to leave.
AC de Winton
London SW10

Conclave method

Sir, Pope Francis died on April 21. The conclave began in Rome on May 7 to choose his successor as leader of 1.4 billion Catholic Christians (letter, May 8). Justin Welby retired as Archbishop of Canterbury on January 6 and it is unlikely that his successor, overseeing the 900,000 members of the Church of England’s electoral rolls, will be in place before Christmas. It would be preferable and much quicker for the General Synod of the C of E to be called to meet and to elect future archbishops.
The Rev Stephen Trott
Rector of Pitsford with Boughton, Northants

Playing by the rules

Sir, I was impressed by my five-year-old son’s versatility many years ago when I found him confidently playing the ruler in a school concert. The teacher later explained that he had got a piece of apple lodged down his recorder (letters, May 6-8) and they had extemporised as a result.
Katie Jarvis
Nailsworth, Glos

Whiffy weasel

Sir, David Francis Seelig (letter, May 8; Nature Notebook, May 3) says he has never sniffed a weasel — but I have. Years ago I raised a baby weasel that I had accidentally run over on my way to my sons’ sports day, and whenever it was surprised or frightened it would emit a very nasty smell — weasels belong to the mustelidae family, all of which do this when disturbed. Our weasel became almost a pet. We called him Diesel and he would use the cat flap to go into the garden, and would lie next to me in bed. Early on, when he needed feeding every hour, I took him with me on the Tube, swaddled in cotton wool in an ice cream box, to and from work at Sotheby’s.
Bunny Grahame
Bures, Essex

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