Our children are stigmatised and traumatised enough by being singled out as different without compounding this by harassing families because they cannot afford to pay for their children’s school meals? Who are these people within local authorities authorising this massively damaging witch-hunt of the poorest in Scottish society and why are they not being held to account for their actions?

The right to food is a human right and it protects the right of all human beings to live in dignity, free from hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition and is protected under international human rights and humanitarian law. It is also recognised in many national constitutions.

However, in the UK we have huge increases in levels of malnutrition, hunger and food bank usage, all of which indicate breaches of our international legal obligations with respect of the right to food. Even in times of crisis, the UK Government has a duty to ensure physical and economic access at all times to adequate food.

School pupils who receive free school meals should not be stigmatised, says reader (Picture: Adobe)

Currently, the Scottish Government is incorporating International Human Rights Treaties into Scottish law. However, that is not going to happen overnight and if the experience of the first Treaty to be incorporated (The UN Rights of the Child) is anything to go by, the UK Supreme Court will ensure that the incorporation will be limited to those matters devolved to the Scottish Parliament and take an inordinate amount of time to complete.

When the UK Supreme Court passed judgement on the incorporation of the Rights of the Child it stated: “Section 28/7 of the Scotland Act preserves the power of the UK Parliament to make laws for Scotland”. It went on to say that “if any provision of a Scottish Act of Parliament purports to modify Section 28/7 of the Scotland Act, it will fall outside the competence of the Scottish Parliament”.

I have to wonder why the UK government is allowing this to happen and that the Scottish Government is not urgently seeking the ultimate solution by whatever means possible – the enforcement of our undoubted sovereignty and the restoration of our independence.

For Scotland, this is not a cost of living crisis it is a constitutional crisis and a crisis of conscience for all politicians of whatever political party who aspire to a Scotland where we are all proud to live, where no-one has to go hungry, and where we take our rightful place in the community of the world’s nations, realise everyone's human rights and ensure that our international obligations and the obligations to our people are assured in perpetuity.

Alex Thorburn, Lockerbie, Dumfries & Galloway

One problem...

As usual John McLaren gives us a well-argued and thought-provoking piece (Perspective, 15 December). However, I have serious doubts about one part of his thesis. He suggests the big increase in taxes he calls for would be temporary. Experience shows that taxation often defies the laws of physics and that what goes up rarely comes down.

S Beck, Edinburgh

Think of children

Susie Mountain highlights the need for consideration of the legal impact of cohabitation, at present under review (Friends of The Scotsman, 5 December). Obviously, this article is about asset allocation and safeguarding shared assets in time of strife within a longterm partnership.

However, within marriage and longer term relationship there may be a shared agreement that the couple expect that children will be part of their longterm plans. Therefore, if this shared dream comes to pass it is extremely important that the child's needs also be considered as important – or even more important – as divvying up joint assets at time of strife.

Securing financial safety for children can be carried out if due consideration is given at the right time. Of course, cohabitation is a legal term generally assuming living together under one roof. However, if any liaison results in the birth of a child then the needs of that child should be paramount and financial safety is as important for a short term liaison as for children born to cohabiting parents. On that basis we need to ensure that there is a legal requirement to provide financial aid for the child until it is old enough to support itself.

Not enough consideration is given to this element of cohabitation and this should be a matter of concern and action by Government. Failure to act might well be construed as a failure of Human Rights.

A B Lewis, Coylton, Ayrshire

Ireland’s own

Mary Thomas concedes that access to healthcare in her idolised Irish Republic is actually “means tested” (Letters, 14 December). This is a dirty term indeed in the “progressive” politics which Scottish separatists profess; how fortunate to have a UK health service free at the point of use.Ms Thomas surely kissed the Blarney Stone to inspire a torrent of claims (some factual, others incorrect and most highly debatable) exhorting us to follow Ireland’s example and throw off the shackles of Tory Westminster.Repeating responses given in recent letters disproving much of this would be tiresome, but suffice it to say that Irish consumers paying extra VAT and extortionate prices for petrol and other goods might disagree with Ms Thomas that their higher average salaries “more than cover a higher cost of living”.Presenting Éire as a model for our own secessionists to imitate, Ms Thomas ignores a significant fact: for all the faults of successive administrations, the state has never once had a left-wing government in its history. Instead, business and wealth-creation have escaped largely unhindered. The Irish education system (rightly praised by Ms Thomas) remains traditional and rigorous.Contrast this with Scotland, where we have an anti-enterprise party in charge, loudly supported by the ludicrous Greens and Scottish Socialist Party. Education has become a dumbed-down vehicle for social engineering rather than one for academic excellence and opportunity for our young people.

Martin O’Gorman, Edinburgh

Happy souls

After plucking up the courage to write to The Scotsman for the first time (Letters, 9 December), I had not anticipated a response like that submitted by A McCormick (Letters, 12 December). I feel obliged to reply.

I found A McCormick’s views somewhat mixed up in that they say one thing and then contradict themselves but essentially, along with prior contributor Martin O’Gorman, they put Southern Ireland down as if it were the only country to fall victim to the banking crisis in 2008. Yes, the UK government, to its credit, lent Ireland €10 billion at the time of the crisis but the bulk of this was repaid well before time, with a balance being retained for “emergencies”. In the absence of any reply I ask again: if Southern Ireland is “no paradise” – and I am not saying it is – why are the Irish on the whole so articulate, service orientated, positive, self confident etc?

Let me perhaps suggest an answer to those who consistently write to The Scotsman disparaging the possibility of Scotland becoming an independent country. Could it be that having won the right to self determination in 1921, Ireland and its people, despite many setbacks over the years since then, have flourished on the back of emphasising their distinctive heritage, culture, language and literature?

In other words, in the 20th, and certainly the 21st, century they have rediscovered who they are, and by gosh they are comfortable with it! There was a time in America, particularly along the eastern seaboard, when notices such as “Irish need not apply” or words to that effect were commonplace, but today to have any kind of Irish ancestry in the USA is exalted!I am not a member of the SNP.

Iain Mac Intyre, Argyll

Saturation point

The Prime Minister has said he will fix the “asylum farce” and the cost of it to the country. He is not going to fix anything by housing thousands of illegals in Pontins or student accommodation.

He can only fix the situation by A) getting the genuine asylum seekers quickly separated from the economic migrants, which most of them are; B) getting the UK out of the stifling European court of human rights; C) stop taxi-ing the occupants of the rubber boats in the Channel to the south east coast and instead taxi them back to France. It’s becoming more obvious by the day that the money we’re throwing at France is not being used to stop the illegals getting here. The UK is reaching saturation point and can no longer sustain the costs involved.

Ian Balloch, Grangemouth, Falkirk

No win, no fee

Rishi Sunak and Dominic Raab have vowed to change the law to stop Channel migrants claiming asylum.

One way is to abandon Europe's Human Rights treaty.

However there is a quicker way. Immigration lawyers get paid to represent migrants, who are predominantly not asylum seekers but economic migrants and who will be a longterm burden on UK housing, social services and the NHS. UK taxpayers pay for this and for these immigration lawyers' huge legal aid fees.

The law should immediately be changed so that these immigration lawyers only get paid if their clients' asylum claim is granted.

They will very quickly refuse to represent economic migrants when they realise that there is no money in it for them.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

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Readers' Letters: Right to food is a duty government must fulfil

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