Letters: You don't have to travel as far as Panama to find tax havens

Please email your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Despite the tropical locations, this is a very British scandal (AFP/Getty Images)

There is no need to go to Central America to find a conduit for money laundering and tax avoidance. Just a short boat ride from England there are two backyard tax havens where any rich person can be sure of a warm welcome.

The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are as British as Birmingham - except that these two territories are allowed a special tax status, a status that goes unchallenged whatever successive Prime Ministers might say about wanting to put an end to off-shore tax dodging.

It would take only a simple short parliamentary bill to end their privileged, anomalous constitutional position and bring both places fully into the United Kingdom. Now that MP's are in a sententious mood about tax avoidance, such a bill would surely have wide parliamentary support. Well, maybe not from those MP's who might be keeping their own money there.

Chris Payne

Philippines

Junior Doctor’s Strike

I am a junior doctor and I am tired and worn down from the government's constant barrage of attacks on me and my profession. Their new contract will see doctors working more whilst earning less under less regulated and less safe conditions. We will also have new rotas that will confine the concepts of "continuity of patient care" and "doctors' family life" to history. My patients will be left unsafe and more and more of my colleagues will leave the profession. However, I love my job and I care about my NHS and I know that in 25 years time, when today's politicians are professional after dinner speakers, or directors of private healthcare companies, I will still be doing what I do and still giving everything for my patients. It is for this reason that I, and all my colleagues, will continue to fight the government's unsafe and unfair contract imposition. They may only have a few years in power, but we know that the NHS is for life and we will continue to fight for it, and those who rely on it, until our dying days.

Dr Jonathan Barnes

London

Cannabis

Why not just be rational about cannabis? (Independent April 5th). All drug policy should be based on science and evidence. As long as the Government allows criminals to be in charge of the production and supply of drugs, they remain out of control. Everyone is worse off except the criminals. They should take drugs out of the criminal justice system and treat them as the health and social problem that they are. That would be the totally rational solution.

Hope Humphreys

Somerset