MAY I add my tribute to Sir Stuart Bell and convey my sympathies to his family (Echo, Oct 15).

I do not think he was right in all his actions and I am convinced more than ever that the stand he took at the time of the Cleveland Child Sex Abuse scandal was misguided.

I think that he was too blind to where the entanglement with Europe could lead. His general position on politics was more to the right of the spectrum than mine.

He did have to face criticism over the distance he kept from his constituents, not all of it justified, but he defended himself in his own way.

G Bulmer, Billingham.