ONCE again Ben Ord, from predominantly white-British Spennymoor, blames immigrants for the country’s problems (HAS, Sept 8). This time he wrongly accuses immigrants of causing a housing shortage.

Until 1979, Britain had the best and most affordable housing stock in the whole of Europe, but the Thatcher government deliberately decided to create a housing shortage by effectively stopping building council houses and giving a green light to parasitical property speculation.

Successive so-called Labour governments went further by privatising whole estates and even went so far as to encourage the return of the slum landlord.

The transfer of wealth from working people to the rich means that today’s wages are so low for many families that many can’t afford to rent or buy any home.

There is an easy solution to the housing shortage and that is to build more council houses.

We have plenty of land on former industrial sites, raw materials are cheap and there are hundreds of thousands of highly skilled building workers on the dole.

John Gilmore, Bishop Auckland.