I NOTE that UK Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey’s appearance at the Holyrood Social Security Committee was disrupted by the unseemly heckling she was subjected to by members of the public, causing proceedings to be suspended on more than one occasion ("Tory minister is heckled as she says rape clause offers extra support", The Herald, April 17). It baffles me why there is a public presence at these serious meetings when the inevitable consequences are disruption by an ill-informed and boorish element with either personal axes to grind or who are there for party propaganda purposes. Either way it is unedifying, unhelpful and preventable but sadly gives the TV news producers what they would mistakenly describe as “good television”.

No mention was made in the BBC Reporting Scotland report I watched of Professor Adam Tomkin’ s question regarding the likelihood of Holyrood being ready and able to take over the benefits system by 2021. Ms McVey said: “We need more information coming forward and we need it quicker and with greater clarity.” She added: “At the same time we will have to put measures in place to ensure that, if the Scottish Government can’t do it, we will no doubt end up doing it through agency agreements”.

With the well-documented list of SNP failures – farmers’ payments, Police Scotland, NHS, education and so on –one wonders what possible hope there is that this most complicated of all their challenges so far will not result in anything other than another hopeless debacle with Westminster providing the safety net once again.

Donald Lewis,

Pine Cottage, Beech Hill, Gifford, East Lothian.

ESTHER McVey's outrageous defence of the Tory rape clause and the Home Office's deportation of Windrush immigrants ("Russ apology for treatment of Windrush generation", The Herald, April 17) is further evidence that Scotland needs all the powers to take its own decisions in order to treat people with normal decency rather than spending millions on bombing Syria. With Labour abstaining rather than voting against Theresa May's contempt for Westminster democracy then it really is time we got out of that place.

News that the UK Government is using the Supreme Court to thwart democratic decisions of our Scottish Parliament is a reminder that devolved power is power retained and UK promises made in 2014 were worthless.

The Continuity Bill was approved by a majority of MSPs from four different parties with only the Tories, and Liberal Democrat Mike Rumbles, opposed to protecting Scottish Parliament's hard-won powers and they forget that a majority in every electoral area in Scotland voted to Remain in the EU.

As the Scottish Parliament currently has a legitimate electoral and democratic mandate from Scottish voters to hold another referendum on independence, it should use its mandate to legislate now for another independence referendum without naming a date so that we are ready once the harsh reality of Brexit kicks in, not least as a central plank of the anti self-government campaign in 2014 was that Scotland had to vote No in order to remain in the EU.

Mary Thomas,

Watson Crescent, Edinburgh.