Readers who resent the tide of junk mail coming through their letterboxes will be interested to hear about a recent landmark High Court judgment.

A Yorkshireman took his local council to court for selling electoral roll information to commercial companies.

The court decided this was in breach of his right to privacy under the Human Rights Act.

It is certainly wrong our democratic electoral rights should be compromised in this way.

The information gathered by councils for electoral purposes should be used solely for those purposes and not sold on - as it is by every council in the country - to any company that wishes to buy it.

Endless unsolicited mailshots from loan companies, home insurance outfits, charities, newspaper promotions and the like pour through my door, all of them presumably as a result of this iniquitous practice.

At the least, electors should be offered the opportunity to be "ex-roll" for these purposes, in the way telephone subscribers are allowed to be ex-directory.

-Nigel Breakspear, Brunswick Square, Hove