Letters: MPs’ salaries, Ruby the Heartstealer, and how to avoid washing up

Tax breaks for families

Sir: Hugo Rifkind is wrong to imply (6 July) that the current income tax system is indifferent to family structure, and thus the Conservative party’s attempt to give tax breaks to married couples is ‘a blatant attempt at social engineering’.

Is it not social engineering when the current system demands more tax from a single-earner family than a dual-earner family, even if the total income is the same? Milton Friedman once said: ‘We tend to talk about an individualist society, but it really isn’t, it’s a family society.’ Hugo makes the mistake of seeing society as a collection of individuals, but in the real world most important financial decisions are taken by families or households. It is right that the tax system should reflect this.
Scott Clyne
London N7

MPs’ salaries

Sir: Charles Moore was absolutely right (The Spectator’s Notes, 6 July); parliament’s evasion of its responsibility to set its own salaries is evidence of political cowardice which has resulted in an undemocratic absurdity. If members of parliament cannot be trusted to act responsibly in this matter, how can we trust them with anything else?

Regaining public trust will require parliament to show that it can exercise a modicum of self-restraint. Members should set the levels for the following Parliament as part of a dissolution. Members seeking re-election would know that electors could easily identify those who had supported or opposed a settlement that was deemed excessive. Furthermore, having known in advance the levels of salaries and allowances, candidates who were elected would have no grounds for complaint.
Peter Inson
Colchester, Essex

Ruby and Berlusconi

Sir: Nicholas Farrell (‘In defence of Berlusconi’, 29 June) describes the Italian judicial system admirably. Most serious lawyers in Italy would agree with him. However he barely mentions Karima El Mahroug, the young woman Berlusconi was said to have paid for sex.