Reports of billionaires receiving furlough millions risks undermining support for a scheme that has protected many livelihoods in this crisis (UK furlough scheme pays out millions to foreign states and tax exiles, 19 March). It is not those billionaires who ultimately receive furlough money (or indeed many of us as shareholders of public companies), but workers in the businesses who would otherwise be unemployed.
We might hope that rich business owners would continue to pay the wages of people who are not able to work for months on end, but this is not reasonable, and is the role of all of us through a progressive tax system. The Guardian would do better to focus on tracking down those fraudsters who have been abusing furlough money and not using it to keep people in their jobs.
Paul Cullum
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• I can’t see how this scheme could possibly have been introduced and administered with a test for the financial state or nationality of business owners. And if it had been, it would have rightly been heavily criticised, because it could have meant some workers being penalised simply because of who they worked for. Please concentrate on genuine injustice and bad policy.
David Mills
Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, East Riding of Yorkshire
• All credit to the Guardian for investigating this scandal, but surely the only unlikely thing about it is the use of the word “unlikely” in the headline in your print edition: “The unlikely recipients of furlough millions revealed”. The rich don’t get rich by accident – they do it by taking (not making) money wherever and whenever they can.
Marion Hutt
Seaford, East Sussex
