The public needs to know that the government is not hers but ours. Government should be responsible to the citizens and voters of the country, not to the Queen and her subjects.So who should read out the Government’s proposals? The obvious candidate would be the Prime Minister: it is he, after all, who has ultimate control of the speech’s contents. A lady in waiting and one or two gentlemen ushers will sit out today’s show Silver, though not Gold, Stick in Waiting will stay away. But such tinkering does nothing to modernise the constitution and encourage voters to take an interest in what their representatives are doing.Ironically the Queen will read out legislative proposals that will significantly change the British constitution: reform of the House of Lords, a new electoral system for European elections and changes to the legal system.

Bills and laws should be the product of a democratic process: voters express their views on party manifesto pledges and so choose their representatives for the Commons to make their law.The Queen and the Government, we were told, are aware of this problem; today we will see some minor changes. Despite one revolution and four and a half centuries of gradual evolution, the Queen remains head of state. As such, she will not only read out today’s speech but must give her assent if any bill is to become law. This is either a quaint, but irrelevant tradition or an influential and important role. Either way the Queen should give it up.
If our constitution is to evolve a little further towards democracy, her Majesty should be relieved of these tasks.

TODAY THE “Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty” presents “Her” government’s legislative programme for the new parliamentary year. Amidst the pomp and flummery, fancy dress and walking backwards, she will put her voice to the elected government’s bills. But we should pause to ask a simple question: why?

Britain is, of course, not actually a democracy but a constitutional monarchy. If British prison policies are defensible, we have every responsibility to do exactly that – and defend them, instead of placing ourselves arrogantly above the “international morality” that we are so quick to enforce on other states.BEN MORANEdinburgh. To lose a family member in violent circumstances is no less unbearable in Britain than anywhere else.
Finally, your rejection of the criticism of rising British prison populations – “patently a matter of domestic criminal justice policy” – is chillingly identical with the excuses used by torturing states throughout the world.

Whilst such abuses are certainly less frequent here, for which I am profoundly thankful, the difference is one of degree and not of kind. Dismissing legitimate criticism in this way draws an imaginary distinction between wholesome, democratic Britain (where torture just doesn’t happen) and evil “police states”, located far away in the Third World. A total of 14 cases, involving 79 boys over two years, drawn from anecdotal evidence and personal recollection, is hardly a strong foundation for making the dubious and offensive claim that gang rape among young people is almost exclusively a black problem.
Official prisons service figures paint a rather different picture. While 9 per cent of the white prison population is there for rape and other sexual offences, only 7 per cent of the black prison population is there for the same offences. Indeed, official figures show that there is no basis for the commonly held assumption that black people are more likely to commit crime than white people.If we are to reduce rape, we need to combat distorted young male attitudes towards women, not start drawing conclusions of racial differences on dubious research.HELEN EDWARDSLondon SW9.

Sir: Your editorial “Don’t debase the fight for human rights” (20 November) was arrogant in its rejection of UN criticism of the UK human rights record. Sir: Trevor Phillips rightly questions the quality of research of Channel Four’s recent Dispatches programme on teenage gang rape (“The grave danger of turning rape into a racial issue”, 19 November). These had been a feature of Christian Socialist teaching in England since the 1890s, as I have documented in my new book on Christian Socialism.
Yet when the Anglican bishops at the 1888 Lambeth Conference were giving a blessing to socialism as close to the precepts of Christ, the papacy was denouncing it. Until the 1960s much of the British Roman Catholic leadership actively opposed the welfare state. The fact is that the social teaching and practice of all the churches is a good deal more varied and ambiguous than Vallely seems to admit.Canon ALAN WILKINSONPortsmouth. But Vallely neglects the influence of the Christian Socialist tradition on Blair Blair has paid frequent tributes to this.