SIR – One of the biggest points to get across to people when trying to understand politics and economics is the simple fact that since the 1980s, the two are no longer related.

The whole ethos of Free Market Economics (which Thatcher introduced in the 1980s) is that the state has little involvement with the economy. That is the business of the banks. The banks produce 97 per cent of the money in circulation (out of thin air) and the banks alone decide where that money will be directed.

So let me ask, does anyone believe that the banks are going to distribute this new money where it will benefit the country, or where it will benefit the banks and their shareholders? Correct – and that is why the country is in the mess it is.

The big problem remains that the Chancellor simply refuses to accept that Free Market Economics is dead.

It died in 2008 and very nearly killed the major world economies in the process. Until we take the power to produce money away from the banks and give it to an independent Economics Committee, we remain on the road to certain ruin.

Christopher Hindle, Osterley Grove, Bradford