Why on earth is Anas Sarwar given such an easy ride?

BBC Scotland and most of the UK mainstream media are failing to subject Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, to an appropriate level of robust political scrutiny. Until rigorous answers are provided, questions that should be persistently posed to the illusive master of the vacuous sound-bite whenever he is found (or deigns to meet with selected journalists), include:

• Why do “all roads lead to Westminster” except the road from Scotland?

• Why do you think the Labour Welsh Government is "grossly incompetent"? (Given comparable statistics in commonly devolved areas such as health and education, this is the logical conclusion if his true opinion is that the SNP Scottish Government is “incompetent”.)

• Why will it take a decade, or much longer, to fix Britain if Britain is not fundamentally broken? How can a country grow and thrive within a failing authoritarian Union that in spite of exploiting that country’s huge resources does not provide adequate infrastructure or funding and severely limits that country’s borrowing powers?

• When will the Acorn Carbon Capture project receive the funding promised by the UK Government?

• What is the latest date by which energy bills in Scotland will start to come down as promised by the Labour Party prior to the General Election?

• How will maintenance of the triple lock, which effectively offsets the effects of inflation, compensate pensioners losing the winter fuel allowance and make them “better off” (the words of Mr Sarwar’s boss, Sir Keir Starmer)?

• Do you think politicians should pay tax on "fringe benefits" received as “gifts” from third parties?

There are many other questions journalists could ask Keir Starmer’s Scottish puppet but until we start to receive some precise answers to the questions posed above then collectively the media in Scotland is not providing the level of political reporting deserved by the people of Scotland.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry.

Change the rules on political gifts

IF it’s within the rules for senior politicians (or prosecuting attorneys) to accept personal gifts from people with vested interests in the laws of the land then the rules themselves are corrupt and must be changed.

Mary McCabe, Glasgow.

Read more letters

Starmer blew his big chance to show himself to be a statesman

How can Starmer, Rayner and the rest sleep at night?

Make indyref a two-thirds vote

KEZIA Dugdale and Stephen Noon have proposed rules that would allow another secession referendum if it seemed likely that such a vote would produce a majority for secession ("Labour ‘should strike indy deal’", The Herald, September 26). How is that to be judged? Opinion polling and election results would be the indicators used, and the result would be decided by a simple majority.

In most cases where such constitutional reform is decided, the margin of victory has been a lot more than 50 per cent plus one vote. Not all have been as decisive as Norway’s, in 1905, which produced over 99 per cent in favour of leaving the 90 year-old union with Sweden. But surely major constitutional change deserves overwhelming public support? The Brexit result has shown how unsatisfactory it is when the 50 per cent barrier is narrowly breached. On another day, the result might well have been different.

What is wrong with following the SNP’s own stipulation that changing its constitution requires a two-thirds majority? That is a decisive measure that seems likely to reflect a "settled will". Why is what is good enough for the SNP too good for Scotland?

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

The war on LGBT identities

I HAVE stayed in the Leith constituency for a long time, and have been represented by some good MPs. As a gay man who grew up in an era of pervasive anti-LGBT discrimination, and who has campaigned for decades to end it, my MP is important to me. Malcolm Chisholm was excellent, and repeatedly stood up for LGBT equality, both as MP, and later as MSP.

Mark Lazarowicz supported our efforts against discrimination also, and when the seat went SNP for a while, Deirdre Brock was good on this too.

What a shock therefore to see your front page headline today ("Scots Labour MP’s unease at conversion therapy ban", The Herald, Septmber 26). Conversion practices ("conversion therapy") are attempts by someone to change or suppress another person's sexual orientation or gender identity. In practice, they are done by those who think that being LGBT is unsatisfactory or wrong, and should therefore be eliminated. Needless to say, conversion practices do not work: a person's sexual orientation and gender identity are what they are, and can't be changed by external pressure. Conversion practices can cause great harm to people's mental health.

The UK is surrounded by countries that have already banned conversion practices. Both the previous Tory UK government and the SNP Scottish Government promised to introduce a ban, and it was a Labour manifesto commitment in July's election. But your report today suggests that my new MP is campaigning against the proposed ban. I very much hope that we will hear from Tracy Gilbert that that is not the case, and that she supports legislation to stop these hugely harmful attempts to eradicate LGBT identities like mine.

Tim Hopkins, Edinburgh.

Living in a police state

SO Police Scotland has eventually woken up and read the room. It has made a screeching U-turn and declared that only a man can commit a rape and a man accused of rape will no longer be permitted to self-declare their sex ("Police Scotland drop controversial policy to let rapists self-ID sex", heraldscotland, September 25). Better late than never.

I read that Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs says that “the absence of direction has left Police Scotland… to determine policy and practice in a way that achieves a legal and appropriate balance of rights and duties”.

The problem for the police was, of course, that there was no legal right to do what they had been doing. The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was prevented from gaining Royal Assent by the intervention of the UK Government, which clearly has more understanding of biology than Holyrood.

When the polis arrogate to themselves “legal” powers that simply do not exist in law then we really do live in a Police Scotland state.

SNP policy has a great deal to answer for.

Alasdair Sampson, Stewarton.

Tracy Gilbert, Labour MP for Edinburgh North and Leith, pictured with Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer (Image: PA)

Parents don't need yet more reviews

I FEEL utter despair at Sue Webber’s Agenda piece ("Getting it right for children with ASN", The Herald, September 25). Perhaps rather than suggest to the children, families and carers affected by the current inadequate and limited services that the way forward is to make changes to a Code of Practice, and call for a review of the current services, Ms Webber and her committee should call for the immediate provision of actual facilities and the full funding of the support services needed to do the job properly?

As a parent of an ASN child roundly failed by education services, I am surely not alone in feeling despair at the politicians’ response of an ongoing cycle of reviews followed by launches of new initiatives with suitably vague aims, codes of practice and charters. A few years later the process is repeated with the new incumbents attempting to score political points through criticising the last failed initiative and making empty promises about doing things better.

Those affected don’t need more reviews, vague, phoney new initiatives with ridiculous titles (in recent times GIRFEC, Getting It Right For Every Child, must be the most insulting term to those vulnerable children and families being failed) or political point-scoring. Solid, fully funded commitments to providing the appropriate facilities and support to carry out their statutory duties as detailed in the Education (ASL)(Scotland) 2004 Act are the only thing that will improve the situation. Everything else is an insult to those adversely affected.

Duncan F MacGillivray, Dunoon.