I urge Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to listen to Gordon Brown, our best Labour chancellor in recent times (Tables without food, bedrooms without beds. Grinding child poverty in Britain calls for anger – and a plan, 8 February). Not just listen and nod, but ask him for help in their plans for government. Labour might appear to be heading for a victory, but they need to be shouting about what they can and will do, not what they no longer plan to do (Starmer to announce scaling back of £28bn green investment plan, 7 February). Otherwise, the Tory press will continue to paint the party in terms of U-turns and dithering, making Labour appear indecisive and not committed to change. I fear that Reeves is wearing a banker’s hat and putting “fiscal prudence” and “growth” ahead of simple Labour values that get my vote: taxing the rich to feed the poor, and ensuring benefits look after those least able to fund themselves. Brown’s article shows the way. Susan Treagus Manchester Gordon Brown rightly calls out the wall of silence around poverty. In calling for action to address this, he refers to the plight of children in Kirkcaldy (Gordon Brown slams ‘obscene’ levels of destitution in the UK, 8 February). So why no mention of the £25-a-week-per-child Scottish child payment that the Scottish government introduced to mitigate the dangerously low levels of welfare benefits mandated by the UK government? Could it be that, due to Labour’s hopes of denting the SNP majority in Scotland, Brown is also turning efforts to fix poverty into “a question of ideology” rather than “a question of decency”? Those destitute families deserve more than charitable efforts to redistribute waste products. They deserve an honest appraisal of the efforts that their government has made to protect them from the worst impacts of Westminster’s cruel policies. Shelagh Young Edinburgh In Gordon Brown’s clarion call for action on child poverty, he refers to children without beds. I would ask the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to read Charles Causley’s great poem Timothy Winters. Written after the second world war, it is a tragedy that it still resonates today. The final verses should touch any heart. Les Bonney Cheltenham, Gloucestershire