Your report (Labour whips warn party’s MPs not to try to amend bills or disagree in public, 10 October) should alarm anyone who believes in parliamentary democracy. One of the main reasons for having a parliament is so that laws are not simply made by decree but go through a process of scrutiny in which amendments are debated and voted on. The Labour government must think its bills are perfect, yet laws are complex and there is almost always scope for improvement. If Labour MPs are not going to contribute to that process, what is the point of them? If they are to speak with “one voice” in public, as they have been told, we only need one of them there to do that – Keir Starmer. The rest can go home.
Victor Anderson
Brighton
• That Labour MPs have been told not to attempt to amend government bills is deeply depressing. In the past nine years of Conservative rule, the quality of legislation presented to parliament has fallen year after year. Bill committees in the Commons have been tightly controlled by government whips, with those with expertise on the subject excluded.
Those of us who work to scrutinise and challenge government proposals had hoped that a Labour government whose legitimacy rests on barely a third of the popular vote would listen more to reasoned criticism and debate. It looks as if this change of government has not meant any change in the elective dictatorship which the late Lord Hailsham complained is the uncomfortable reality behind our creaking parliamentary democracy.
William Wallace
Liberal Democrat, House of Lords
• Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
