Paul Ballard-Whyte (Oxford Mail, June 3) claims that by leaving the EU, we can control our own borders and suggests that it is immigration which has put pressure on housing, schools and hospitals.
Certainly, there are aspects of immigration which could have been better managed to ease pressure on public services: at the school where I am Chair of Governors, it took nearly four years from requesting extra classrooms to cope with rising demand, to actually admitting more pupils.
The delay was the fault of UK organisations, not the EU.
We have seen the net loss of 2.5m affordable homes since the Right to Buy legislation was passed. The housing shortage, like the shortage of school places is a problem homemade in the UK, long before high levels of immigration.
We have to be honest with ourselves and realise that leaving the EU won’t solve many of the longstanding problems of housing, infrastructure and schools. We will still need to address these problems, whatever the outcome of the Referendum.
Certainly, we cannot blame the EU or immigration for many of our woes.
As I took my son to the fracture clinic at the John Radcliffe Hospital this morning, I reflected on the fact that it was a Dutch doctor who dealt with his broken collarbone, but it was a British coalition Government which increased his university tuition fees to £9,000 a year. I know whom I trust more with my children’s future.
Cllr MARY CLARKSON
Dunstan Road, Oxford
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