Lord Young’s legacy

sir – Perhaps lesser known among the remarkable achievements of Lord Young of Graffham (Obituaries, December 10) is his role in helping the Prince’s Trust to become the leading charity of youth enterprise that it now is.

This was through his early spotting of the great potential of the Youth Business Initiative, which the then Prince of Wales had created to assist and fund unemployed young people to get off the dole and start their own businesses.

In 1986, Lord Young’s offer on behalf of the government of matched funding provided the catalyst for its merger with Sir Angus Ogilvy’s charity, the Youth Enterprise Scheme, to create the Prince’s Youth Business Trust under the umbrella of the Prince’s Trust.

Progress was turbocharged, and within 10 years some 25,000 new businesses had got off the ground. Two-thirds of these were still flourishing after the time period in which, usually, the same number would have failed – a tribute both to the Prince’s Trust, of course, but also to Lord Young’s remarkable foresight and abilities.

Rupert Fairfax

Assistant private secretary to the then Prince of Wales, 1986-88

Castle Bytham, Lincolnshire

sir – Lord Young was a brave and principled Thatcherite torchbearer whose energy and ideas will be greatly missed.

A staunch supporter of Brexit, deregulation, privatisation and free markets, he understood that the Conservatives’ future political success is dependent on the party keeping faith with its low-tax, pro-business and property-owning philosophy. Moreover, in his memoirs, he recalled how even at the zenith of Thatcherism, true believers were in a minority within Cabinet.

His death comes at a perilous but by no means hopeless moment for the Conservatives. Following the setbacks of recent weeks, especially the overturning of the mini-budget – the best articulation of the party’s core values in more than 30 years – and the subsequent imposition of the highest taxes since the Second World War, Thatcherites must keep the faith, fight our corner and resist the temptation to defect to insurgent parties that have no chance of electoral success.

Philip Duly

Haslemere, Surrey