Unworkable law

LABOUr Party Deputy Leader Tom Watson’s plan for a regional immigration policy would end up looking like the South African apartheid regime’s Pass Laws.

An immigrant would have to state where they were prepared to live and if it wasn’t a place of the British government’s choosing, their application would be turned down. If they agreed to be placed and subsequently moved, would they be arrested and deported? An unimaginable tragedy, with regular forced repatriations.

This is not going to happen under any government. Tom Watson is just talking down to the Labour-voting public in areas that voted for Brexit. Once again we see the contempt the Labour Party has for the electorate.

I supported the Labour Party for many years. They rescued me and my family from a derelict house, riddled with damp and without electricity. In 1953, when I was nine, Mum and Dad moved into a council flat with electricity and a bathroom. At 73, I can still recollect the excitement and joy. The Labour government was making good on its promises to build us a better future.

Does the fact that I voted for Brexit to stop uncontrolled immigration make me a bigot? On the accession of the eastern european countries to the eU, Tony Blair put the immigration figure at under 20,000. When Bulgaria and romania were due to join, a Bulgarian minister, interviewed on BBC radio, said fewer than 15,000 of her countrymen and women would want to live in the UK.

No government could have planned for the influx that occurred. The NhS can’t cope as it takes decades of planning, building and training staff to care for the sick. There’s a desperate need for social housing, but we shouldn’t build it. This may seem callous considering how a move to social housing improved my childhood, but a largescale social housing programme would lead to further immigration, which may swamp this country.

If I was poor and living in squalor elsewhere in the world, cheap airline tickets to the UK would be my priority. I would get a house, free education for my children and free health care: it’s a no-brainer. Families born and brought

up here are seeing their chances of a decent home receding into the distance, no places in their local schools and longer waiting times for health care.

RON HILDITCH, Cavendish, Suffolk.