WITH all the kerfuffle about Brexit and, will the Prime Minister keep her job, and all the rest of it, it's all to easy to overlook the shameful failing of the government to care for and protect the vulnerable and those in need in our society.

Philip Alston, the United Nations' rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, ended a two-week fact finding mission declaring that the UK government has inflicted “great misery” on its people with “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity, that levels of child poverty were “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”, even though the UK is the world’s fifth largest economy.

Tory MP Rory Stewart told BBC Radio 5 Live on Thursday, November 15 that "80 per cent of the Brexit public support this deal".

Asked by presenter Emma Barnett “how on earth” he knew the level of public support for a document published just hours earlier, Mr Stewart responded, “Ok let me take that back” he said he was "producing a number" to "illustrate what I believe". Old Etonian Rory Stewart is Minister of State for Courts and Justice.

Prime Minister Theresa May can often be heard saying 'We're doing what is best for the country' (or similar). How on earth can she or any of the Tory party possibly make this claim, a claim which is nothing more than a sick joke.

Eric Hyland

Harwood