THE Tory candidate for Keighley, Kris Hopkins, had his photo in your paper with Secretary of State for Transport Mr Chris Grayling – Re-open ‘missing link’ rail line, minister told (Keighley News, May 11).

Do readers know that Grayling signed a contract so that Northern Rail must take conductors off our trains? Hopkins supports this dangerous idea.

If he ever steps up over the wide, high gap between trains and platform in Keighley, or in Saltaire, does Mr Hopkins wonder how an older, lame person or a mum with two small children would manage this safely? Or are we not wanted on trains?

We really need a conductor who can help us, sometimes with a step for those in wheelchairs.

When Grayling was Secretary of State for Justice from 2012 to 2015, he refused legal aid to victims of domestic abuse.

Also, he cut prison staffing so that drug use, violence and suicide became more common. Prison officers are assaulted more often and recruitment is difficult.

This disaster continues.

In April 2017, Garth Prison in Lancashire was found by inspectors to be “one of the most unsafe we have been to ...violence and drugs dominated the prisoner experience”.

The Keighley News’s well-intentioned campaign to ‘Clean up our Streets’ of drug dealers won’t work in the medium term.

Dealers will carry on in prison and after they leave. Prison inspectors found near Wolverhampton that “63 per cent of prisoners said it was easy to get hold of drugs, and 22 per cent said they had developed a drug habit in prison.”

Sadly, Mrs May knew of this record and appointed Grayling to transport.

Safety is one reason why nationalisation of rail services is a popular Labour policy.

We know in this region the East Coast service was efficient and made profits for the public purse, but the Tories took the business away.

Publicly-owned rail services need not be expensive. A Labour Government would take back contracts when they come up for renewal.

ROBERT HOLLAND Skipton Road, Cononley