SIR – During the General Election campaign not a single day has gone by when Ed Miliband or a member of his shadow cabinet has not raised the matter of zero hours contacts. Such remarks are regularly reported in the T&A.

The BBC run Daily Politics repeatedly quoted numbers involved nationally and 697,000 such contracts exist, one third are by preferential choice, leaving 465,000 employees dissatisfied, from a work force of 30 million, approximately one and a half per cent.

During my working life I was a small business employer with a maximum of eight staff, I interviewed many potential employees, so I offer this advice to those on zero hours contracts.

Better to be employed in some form when applying to improve your lot via alternative work. As an employer I had always more interest in applicants with a job, and a decent reference, than somebody from the dole queue.

Ed Miliband says a Labour government will ban zero hours contracts, by doing so he will condemn in excess of 100,000 back to the dole queue.

Better a glass half full than empty, Labour attempt to build a mountain out of a mole hill, implying millions have zero hour contracts.

Alan Chapman, Beck Lane, Bingley