Letters: Why aren’t Italians fighting for their liberty?

Wage concern

Sir: Martin Vander Weyer’s call for higher wages to end the shortage of British HGV drivers (‘Your country needs you at the wheel of a lorry’, 7 August) should be extended to other hard-pressed economic areas which have lost cheap labour from the poorer EU countries. For far too long, farming, hospitality, construction, care homes and other vital services have failed to recruit and train local staff or pay a decent wage. Low wages at the bottom of the economy increase the cost of social welfare benefits, bring in less or no money from income tax and VAT and thus adversely affect the whole economy.

David Thompson

Capel St Mary, Suffolk

Growth industry

Sir: It is good news that companies paying minimum wages to farm labourers cannot get the workers they need (Any other business, 7 August). The British workers are there, but employers are going to have to pay more to them than they could get away with paying eastern European workers.