“DON’T listen to the whingers – London needs immigrants”.

That was the headline of the article in the London Evening Standard by former government advisor Andrew Neather which supposedly revealed a “plot” to make the UK more multicultural.

Mrs S Sibthorpe and J Bell (HAS, both Oct 29) should be aware Mr Neather has said in a second article his words were “twisted out of all recognition”

by “excitable right-wing newspaper columnists”.

He says there was no plot. In 2000, changes were proposed to make it easier for skilled workers to come to the UK. Mr Neather suspected a subsidiary purpose – “boosting diversity and undermining the right’s opposition to multiculturalism”

– but says that “the main goal was to allow in more migrant workers at a point when – hard as it is to imagine now – the booming economy was running up against skills shortages”.

He calls for a “sensible debate”

on immigration, saying that both left and right “need to grow up”.

He concludes: “A diverse society that welcomes immigrants works. We’ve got one right here in London. Why is that so hard to discuss?”

Why indeed?

Pete Winstanley, Durham.

A SUBJECT which the Government would until recently want to be taboo is immigration. This approach can no longer hold.

The prophesies of Enoch Powell about “rivers of blood”

did not materialise, but with the prospect of increasing unemployment and problems with housing we do need to know how many newcomers are entering the country and have some control at points of entry.

The latest influx of immigration for openly economic reasons has come from the new countries admitted to the European Union. Thus, there is not the possible racist tag to any opposition to their entry, and they are not Muslims bringing the suspicion that they might harbour sympathies with militant Islam.

The point is that what is decided by the Government needs to be questioned by us much more than it has been and it behoves the Government to be far more open about its policies and encourage far more public debate.

The upsurge of support for the BNP in areas where working class people have felt forgotten about is but one symptom of what is so radically wrong.

Geoffrey Bulmer, Billingham.