I WAS disappointed to read the letter from D Bourne, who blames the Labour Party for the shortage of housing, schools and hospitals, which he attributes to Labour’s alleged “open door” handling of immigration.

To suggest immigration is the sole cause of all of the so-called “problems”

he has highlighted is just complete nonsense.

The Labour Government of 1997- 2010 undertook the biggest hospital and school-building programme since the foundation of the welfare state. That was made necessary due to 18 years of Conservative neglect of the public services.

During that period, 89,000 more nurses and 44,000 more doctors were recruited to the NHS. Over 36,000 more teachers and 274,000 more support staff and teaching assistants were also recruited. I am sure a number of them were immigrants, but surely we should embrace that positive aspect of immigration.

During that same period, Labour invested £20 billion to bring two million social housing homes up to a decent standard – warm, weatherproof and with modern facilities.

One of the main reasons for the shortage of housing is the Right to Buy policy that was introduced by the Thatcher government in the 1980s. Council properties were sold off at huge discounts to buyers and councils were disallowed from using the receipts of those sales to build new council properties.

Under Thatcher, more than two million council properties were sold and many of them are now in the hands of rich landlords who are making a fortune from housing benefit payments.

One of the main reasons immigration was relatively high under Labour was that the economy was booming and many immigrants were coming here to work, pay their taxes and become self-sufficient.

Today, more than 93 per cent of immigrants are in work and they pay more in taxes than they take from the Exchequer.

Under the current Tory-led government, we have had the lowest number of houses built since 1920.

A future Labour government has pledged to build at least 200,000 new homes a year up to 2020. Given that nearly £24 billion is spent every year on housing benefit, these extra homes will help reduce the benefit bill.

So let’s not wrongly blame all the ills of society on immigrants.

Bernard McEldowney Lickey End.