D. BOURNE (September 17) is correct in identifying out-of-control immigration as one of the main reasons for the crisis in housing and public services and is correct too in attributing the greatest responsibility for this to the last Labour Government.

When Labour came to power in 1997, net inward migration stood at 48,000 but they caused it to increase so steeply that in 2010, when they left office, total immigration for their period in power stood at almost four million, two thirds of which was from countries outside the EU.

Since becoming leader of the Labour Party, Ed Milliband has grudgingly said that Labour ‘got it wrong’ on immigration, which sounds almost accidental.

However, Labour MP, Peter Mandelson, a very influential member of the Blair government, admitted that Labour ‘sent out search parties’ for immigrants to come to the UK and that Labour deliberately engineered mass migration.

He also admitted that Labour’s immigration policy had resulted in many of what he called Labour’s ‘traditional voters’ being unable to find work.

Mandelson’s frank admission makes it quite clear that what happened was completely deliberate.

Sadly, however, the resulting unemployment impacts not on Labour grandees but largely on school leavers, the unskilled, and the already disadvantaged because many immigrants are semi-skilled, at best, and are competing for work similar to that sought by many of our young unemployed.

Attempting to provide homes quickly enough to fill the need which continues to grow, is akin to trying to fill a bucket which has a large hole in the bottom but, despite the obvious difficulties caused by such unprecedented, mass migration, it has been well nigh impossible to mention the problem without being labelled a racist or worse.

Meanwhile, many communities, like Bromsgrove, are fighting inappropriate development, which is swallowing up precious farmland and green belt at a time when concern for food security in our increasingly overcrowded island has never been greater.

M Howard Bromsgrove