The government’s sudden interest in tackling health tourism (Show your passport for NHS treatment, 22 November) is a transparent distraction tactic. The unclaimed cost of treating non-entitled patients is said to be £200m, a mere 1% of the amount the government is trying to strip from the NHS budget through its ludicrous and unachievable “efficiency savings” target.

Dr Bob Bury

Leeds

• Last year, while staying with French friends, I fell down a short flight of steps which resulted in my going to A&E. At reception, I was asked for my passport along with my EHIC card and the usual name, address etc. It took no longer to process than any of the other information. If it can be done in France, why not here in the UK?

Freda Worland

Harpenden, Hertfordshire

• To understand the present state of British universities, institutions whose success depends on free and open discussion, we need only read your letters pages where academics fear to have their names and employing universities displayed (Letters, 21 November).

Nick Williams

Auchenblae, Aberdeenshire

• So the Department for Transport can pay £50m to provide Wi-Fi on some trains (Report, 22 November) and yet families are being turned out of their house to wander the streets. We seem to have lost our way.

Gill Johnston

Peterborough

• As students at UEA 40 years ago, my boyfriend and I had a friend in the coypu eradication unit on the Broads. He left a freshly eradicated coypu on our doorstep in Norwich which we skinned and butchered. I roasted it with carrots and potatoes and we found it delicious (Letters, 21 November) – even better cold the next day.

Certainly not rats!

Helen Wolvey

St Albans

• Will the Queen insist that all the plumbers working on the palace (Report, 19 November) are Corgi registered?

Gerard Gordon

West Kirby, Merseyside

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