Keith Mitchell states that this is Labour’s recession. He seems to have overlooked the fact that this unprecedented recession is global and has badly affected most major economies.

Labour’s approach to supporting Britain’s economy has been threefold: 1. Preventing a banking collapse, so protecting people’s savings and allowing banks to function; 2. Supporting our economy by increasing people’s spending power; 3. Taking steps to get the financial system working again to support business.

Other support included a £145 tax cut for 22 million basic rate taxpayers; cutting VAT by 2.5 per cent – worth £275 for the average household; and providing £3 billion of capital investment for key infrastructure projects such as schools and GP surgeries.

The Tories had nothing to offer, seemingly content to let the recession run its course, allowing unemployment to rise again, and leaving people to sink or swim as in Thatcher’s 1980s.

The Tories’ only alternatives are massive unemployment, cuts, in housing, transport and NHS.

The Tories have committed to a tax cut for millionaires, but would not back Labour’s bid to help the unemployed back to work. They will never change. They are still the same old privileged bunch they were in the 1920s and ’30s.

DAVE ROBINSON, Meaden Hill, Headington, Oxford