The reported £20bn public finances black hole (Rachel Reeves expected to reveal £20bn shortfall in public finances, 25 July) represents substantially less than 1% of GDP. Easy ways to cover this gap include increasing council tax on the wealthiest – ie, in England, an extra £1bn each on bands F, G and H. An extra billion each from airport passenger duty, closing loopholes in capital gains tax and inheritance tax, taxing unused properties and land, and a tax on holiday lets, with much of the rest coming from a tax on profits made in the UK but offshored.
This could be combined with cuts, especially in the interest that the government pays on much of its borrowing, and the nuclear decommissioning programme, which is overengineered.
Mark Bill
Liverpool
• Reading your article on how Labour is astonished at the £20bn black hole in our finances, I cannot help but be disappointed. Not because of the shock of its existence – it was well reported on before the election – but that we had an election in which both parties knew about it but absolutely refused to engage with the issue.
Far more worrying than a failing of the prison or immigration systems, it is a damning statement on our democracy that such a vast issue can barrel towards us but be so utterly ignored.
Joseph Koppenhout
London
• Depending on what burdens the new chancellor may impose, the Guardian may wish to repeat these words that it has previously published: “It is profound irony that it should be in the year of peace and recovery that we have to accept this new hardship. But it is a thing to be taken philosophically and without passion. It stands to reason that no British Government, especially one as anxious to keep popular support as the Labour Government, would needlessly run its head into such fresh difficulties.”
This was published on 28 June 1946 on the announcement of the introduction of bread rationing.
David Tucker
Sowerby, North Yorkshire
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