No political party wants to confront the cost of massive state spending

SIR – Once again, we see two political parties promise vast increases in spending on several fronts. To achieve this spending, taxes have to rise.

The higher-paid would therefore be stung, prompting more tax avoidance schemes. Companies would be hit with higher National Insurance contributions, higher corporation tax, and a minimum wage at an unsustainable rate. All this would increase the cost of employing people, forcing the closure of many small- and medium-sized enterprises and drastically reducing profits.

Indirect taxes such as VAT would also have to increase, leading to increased employment and more poverty. Nick Parry Chester SIR – Rob the rich to pay the poor. The rich clear off. Who pays the poor? David Jennings Brixham, Devon SIR – Your front-page headline (May 11) claims that Labour’s manifesto would “take Britain back to the 1970s”. That seems to be the case and your editorial, rightly, condemns it.

However, it is equally clear that parts of the Conservative manifesto may also be expected to take us back to the same era (or even earlier), while other parts will merely be a continuation of deeply un-conservative policies from the time of David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg.

In fact, other than the commitment to ensure that Britain does indeed leave the EU and a few little treats such as the prospect of new grammar schools, it is difficult to envisage what the Conservative manifesto will have to offer the thousands of previously steadfast Tory voters who deserted the party, either to back Ukip or simply to abstain, during the Cameron era. John Waine Nuneaton, Warwickshire SIR – Is it too much to hope that the Conservative election manifesto might include an undertaking to simplify the tax code so that it fits on one side of A4? David T Price Shenington, Oxfordshire SIR – Philip Moger (Letters, May 12) writes that “the many thousands of commuters who have suffered for a year at the hands of Southern Rail will not be aghast at one aspect of [Labour’s manifesto].”

Mr Moger is either too young to recall or has forgotten the chaos caused by rail strikes and indeed the “Winter of Discontent” strikes by public sector workers, driven by Aslef and other unions. Just because an industry is nationalised does not guarantee a trouble-free existence. Trevor Anderson Wadhurst, East Sussex SIR – What’s so wrong about going back to the Seventies? Summers were hotter, music was better and Scotland qualified for World Cups. Alistair Leitch

Morpeth, Northumberland