Sir – Tutors, lecturers and fellows in Oxford have been informed that in order to obtain payment for tutorials and to continue working for colleges, they must show their passports to a college office, or, in one case, a birth certificate.

This system has been approved by senior tutors and ‘university lawyers’. It is clearly an abuse of civil rights, as no one in the UK is obliged to have a passport.

This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, when citizens were obliged to carry an Ahnenpass, an ancestors’ passport, to prove that they were not Jewish and could thus obtain work or, at least, avoid deportation.

Dr Cyril Edwards, Abingdon