The new Home Secretary will know the dangers of Civil Service targets

SIR – Sajid Javid, the new Home Secretary, will be wary of saying too much against target-setting and seeking “low-hanging fruit”. He will know that, in the Department for Business, which he headed 2015-16, the Insolvency Service (of which I was an independent board member) has targets for the number of directors of insolvent companies it disqualifies.

It has achieved targets by focusing on easy cases. The low-hanging fruit are wives who innocently become directors of companies owned and managed by their husbands. They are disqualified for not having paid enough attention to their husbands’ business. There were examples of serious, difficult cases being abandoned early so that resources could be reassigned to easier cases.

Wherever government targets are set, there will be civil servants looking for the easiest way to achieve them and that will not necessarily be what the politicians intended. Nicholas Ward Banbury, Oxfordshire

SIR – As soon as targets are introduced, people responsible for implementing activity will naturally go for “lowhanging fruit”. In the latest Home Office scandal, heaven help you if you were a 65-year-old granny from Jamaica, rather than a convicted Central European drug dealer with an Uzi under your bed. Rod Sinclair Montjoi, Tarn-et-garonne, France

SIR – Targets are irrelevant. Knowing people who work for the Home Office immigration service in Croydon, I am told that if they worked all day, seven days a week, for a full year, they would hardly make a dent in the backlog.

They just move from one crisis to the next, dealing only with whoever shouts the loudest at the time. Mick Lennard Salisbury, Wiltshire

SIR – Why on earth has the Prime Minister again let Jeremy Corbyn muddy the waters, his main stock in trade?

This time he has linked the Windrush immigrants with illegal immigrants. The former are here quite legally, mistakes have been made and acknowledged and actions taken to remedy the situation.

Illegal immigrants are in a totally different situation. They should be removed gently but firmly.

Theresa May should have the courage to separate the two issues, and to challenge Mr Corbyn. She must ask, and keep asking, what he would do to meet the wishes of a large part of the population to deal with illegal immigrants and to send them back. Bill Ferriday Oxford

SIR – We are told that it’s essential for the Cabinet Brexit balance to be maintained. That means maintaining a tilt of 24 Remainers to six Brexiteers at the Cabinet table.

Surely this situation would be more accurately described as a gross imbalance. Martin Burgess Beckenham, Kent